FIC for peskywhistpaw: "Things Lily Thinks But Never Says in Fourth Year" Title: Things Lily Thinks But Never Says in Fourth Year Author:bewarethesmirk Recipient:peskywhistpaw Rating: PG-13 Words: ~4,000 Warnings: None. Summary: Lily Evans thinks fourth year will be the same as third year, but she’ll be proven wrong on more than one occasion by none other than her friend, Severus Snape. Author's Notes: I really hope you enjoy this, peskywhistpaw! Thank you to the mods for their never-ending patience. I’ve put them through the ringer. Thanks to T for the beta!
Things Lily Thinks But Never Says in Fourth Year
i.
It’s the first day of the new school term, and more specifically, the first day of Lily’s fourth year.
Breakfast conversation at the Gryffindor table is abuzz with how different fourth year is going to be from third year. Lily rolls her eyes. Fourth year will be no different from third year, unless one counts more homework as a remarkable difference. No, fourth year will be more of Binns’ dry lectures; it will be more of the Marauders’ immature and idiotic pranks; it will be more of the meaningless gossip spread by that cow, Andrea Meyers.
Lily eats a spoonful of her porridge while she thinks, and even that tastes the same. When she looks up to see what has Remus Lupin chortling so loudly, she catches the eye of James Potter. They lock gazes for, oh, maybe a second—and then he’s grinning broadly, as if she has declared her love for him. She glares at him and looks back at her porridge.
No, nothing has changed at all, and Lily laments this lack of change. Perhaps, she thinks, she’ll instil some of her own.
Lily shovels some more porridge in her mouth and vaguely listens to Marlene expound on a boy she had met in Brighton over the summer. Lily is a good friend, and so she listens, nods in the appropriate places and offers comfort in others. She goes through the motions, but her attention isn’t all there. When she glances at her watch and sees she has fifteen minutes to get to her first lesson, it’s with relief that she and her friends leave the Great Hall.
Lily’s first lesson is double Potions with the Slytherins.
Marlene is complaining about this very fact as they make their way towards the dungeons.
“Why do all of Gryffindor’s double lessons have to be with those gits?” Marlene flails her hands about in frustration. “Give me Hufflepuff, give me Ravenclaw—anyone but them!”
Lily likes Marlene, but sometimes the girl is a bit dense.
“Anyone but them?” Lily says with raised eyebrows. “That’s a bit harsh.”
Marlene scowls. “No, they’re harsh. A bunch of foul gits.”
“By those standards,” Lily says, “Potter and Black should’ve been sorted into Slytherin, day one.”
Marlene flings her long brown hair over her shoulder with a sharp movement, and she appears to struggle to scowl more deeply. After a moment, Marlene surrenders and grins unrepentantly. “Too true.” Marlene has hated Sirius Black ever since he dumped her without a reason.
Lily smiles back and decides not to pursue the Slytherin matter any further. Besides, they’re almost in the dungeons.
The Potions classroom does not contain any windows to afford light. It smells mouldy, like an Egyptian pyramid locked away for centuries, before Muggle archaeologists go poking their noses in. There are gross things in jars everywhere, and it’s dark and dank.
Lily feels at home for the first time since returning to Hogwarts. Her fingers itch for a scalpel to slice and dice, for the mortar and pestle, for the pewter cauldron. Lily feels fully alert for the first time since returning for fourth year, and when she enters the room to see Severus Snape already seated at his usual table in the front, Lily realizes it’s time for a change.
His back is to her as she descends the steps. She pauses in front of him, waiting for him to look up from scratching something in his atrocious handwriting into the column of his copy of Potions Making Volume Four. Severus loves books and potions more than people.
The rest of the class has almost finished trickling in and ol’ Sluggy is headed down the steps towards his desk. Class is clearly going to begin soon.
Lily clears her throat.
Severus’ hand stills over his book and he glances up. His expression of devout interest doesn’t change when he looks at her, but he speaks in dry tones. “Evans.”
She smiles.
“Severus,” she says and can’t help but notice his black eyes are doing that strange glittering thing.
Severus leans back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did you need something?” he drawls in a bored voice.
“Yes, actually.” She crosses her own arms over her chest. “It seems I’m in need of a Potions partner.”
Severus glances around the room. Everyone else has already acquired partners in the time it’s taken Severus to notice her presence.
He eyes her for a moment. “If you must.” He picks up his quill again and resumes writing.
“Quite frankly,” Lily says as she sits down beside him, putting her bag under her seat, “I’ve been standing in front of you for the last five minutes, waiting for you to look up from your book.”
Severus looks up from his book. “Why?”
Because I like you, she thinks but does not say.
“Because you’re a Potions genius.”
Greasy black hair falls across Severus’ face as he ducks his head. When he looks up again his cheeks are slightly flushed. His lips quirk. “Don’t even think about cheating off me, Gryffindor.”
Lily leans in close to Severus’ ear and whispers, “It’s me you’ll be cheating off, Slytherin.”
When Severus and Lily lock eyes, black meeting green, they exchange a smirk. They’re both Potions geniuses, after all, and they know it.
ii.
It’s Halloween in the Gryffindor common room. It’s only half past ten and already Sirius Black is dancing on a table in his boxers. Marlene, in a moment of insanity, has seduced James Potter into the corner. Currently, their arms are wrapped around each other as they snog awkwardly, breaking away often enough to mutter an “ouch!” as noises bump or teeth clack. Lily scrunches up her nose in disgust. She’s never kissed anyone beyond the Mistletoe Incident of last year—but that was Remus Lupin. He was usually sensible enough, and it had only been a brief meeting of lips, no tongue involved. Whatever Marlene and Potter are doing now looks disgusting and painful—and definitely involves tongue.
She’s bored, here, in the Gryffindor common room, and although it’s well past curfew, she contemplates going to find Severus. She suspects that he’s escaped the clutches of Slytherin House, who are infamous for their love of raucous partying. She loves Marlene and her other friends in Gryffindor, but sometimes she craves Severus’ dry humour and intelligence. She hates his friends—a fact of which he’s well aware—but Severus is different from the other Slytherins he calls friends. Beyond a certain circle obsessed with the Dark Arts and blood purity, many of the Slytherins are actually tolerable.
Lily slips out of the common room, ignoring the Fat Lady’s drunken calls of, “It’s after curfew, young lady!"
The stairs manoeuvre Lily downstairs with minimal fuss. She has no idea where to find Severus, but some niggling suspicion leads her down to the Potions classroom. There are usually wards on the classroom door, magic that's palpable and raises hair on her skin, but tonight she detects no wards. Either she's right or someone is using the classroom for any host of illicit activities. Barring that, it's Slughorn working on a potion and he would hardly give her detention.
Lily opens the heavy door at the front of the classroom. Inside, there's a single figure holding a stirring rod over a potion bubbling in an iron cauldron, clearly pausing in his activity at the sound of her arrival. There are an assortment of ingredients scattered on the table and lengthy notes scribbled on parchment at the cauldron’s side. The candlelight casts Severus' pale face into eerie shadow and the flame dances in his black eyes.
She steps into the room and closes the door quietly behind her.
As she makes her way towards the table—their table—Severus goes back to stirring. The intensity on his face is so far removed from that of a skinny fourteen-year-old boy that it nearly frightens her.
Lily knows better than to speak before Severus.
After several long minutes of calculated anti-clockwise stirs, Severus says, “Skin this shrivelfig, will you?”
Hiding a smile, Lily knows she’s been granted the sacred right of helping Severus brew a potion.
“Okay,” she answers.
The shrivelfig is on the table, easily within her grasp, but Severus picks it up before she can reach it. He looks up long enough to hand it to her. When Severus’ potion-stained fingers brush her clean palm, she feels a tingle of something all the way down to the pit of her stomach. Her gaze jumps to their hands and back to Severus’ face. He watches her intently.
Her lips quirk in acknowledgement of… whatever is going on here… and she takes the shrivelfig. She comes around their table and takes her seat beside Severus, wrist moving in efficient motions as she uses a silver knife to skin the shrivelfig. She knows Severus is watching from the corner of his eye.
“Having an exciting Halloween?” she asks, smile teasing her lips.
“I could ask the same of you.”
She shrugs. “Gryffindor Tower was boring.”
Severus begins to chop some sort of root Lily doesn’t even know by name. “Ah. All the good little Gryffindors went to sleep early, then?”
Lily smiles at the sarcasm. “Some of them are in bed early… but I doubt they’re sleeping.”
Severus chuckles and then winces. “I don’t even want to think—”
Lily grins. “Well, it might interest you to know that when I left Sirius Black was dancing on a table in his underwear.”
This time, Severus glares at her. “Evans, if you dare threaten me with such a horrible image again, I’ll kill you.” Severus chops more, his fingers agile and fascinating to watch.
Lily’s grin becomes wicked enough to be patented Slytherin. “Well, I could tell you what Potter was doing…”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Spoilsport.”
“Pervert.”
“Idiot.”
“Git.”
“Is that the best you can do?” Severus asks, smiling.
“Mm, no, but I don’t want to hurt your feelings too badly.”
“You’re a Gryffindor. I thought your utmost goal in life was to make my life miserable.”
Lily’s smile fades. “I’m not like—”
Severus stops chopping and places a hand on her arm, a gesture that single-handedly stops her mid-sentence. Severus rarely touches anyone.
“I know,” he says quietly.
Her arm is tingling, even through her light jumper. Why do you make me feel this way? she thinks but does not say.
Severus leaves his hand on her arm for a moment that is defined, simply, as too long and entirely too short.
They resume chopping and skinning, returning to the easygoing banter.
iii.
It’s Christmas and Lily’s sister is driving her mad.
It all started, Lily thinks as she walks along the street towards the park, with Petunia’s over-exaggeration while opening presents. Lily had opened her parents’ gift to her—a present brilliantly wrapped in crimson and gold. Inside had been the emerald green winter coat. It was the very expensive winter coat she’d loved when she had gone Christmas shopping with her mum earlier in the hols and had seen it in the shop window.
Her jaw had dropped. She had looked to her parents and beamed. “Enchanting,” she had breathed, unable to find a more fitting word.
Petunia had immediately gone into hysterics. “Mum! She’s bragging about,” and the last part was whispered, “—magic.”
But Lily’s parents were beaming back and didn’t appear to notice Petunia. Lily hadn’t paid Petunia another glance. Tuney was always bloody stupid about these things. Lily had chalked it up to jealousy.
Petunia had sulked the rest of that day and Lily’s mum finally had to go talk to her in private. They had come out of the study, Petunia’s frown gone and a smile in its place. Lily’s mum, frowning, had asked to speak with Lily in private.
“Lily, dear, you know we’re very proud of you…”
“But?” Lily asked, hands on her lips.
Lily’s mum bit her lip. “We’d appreciate, your father and I, that is—Your father and I would appreciate you avoiding words that might upset Petunia. We have to give her time to get used—”
“She’s had over three years to get used to it!”
“You’re hardly here, though, love.”
“So?”
“Lily, don’t get cheeky…”
“Fine, Mum.” Lily had stormed out of her house, into the cold day and the muted sunshine. The sky had threatened snow. Not caring, Lily had made her way to the park, and here she was, standing at the entrance and not at all surprised to see Severus sitting on a swing.
What was surprising was the black eye that marred his face when he looked up at her.
Lily’s breath halts. She walks quickly into the park, letting the cast iron gate swing shut with a clatter.
She doesn’t ask what happened.
“Happy Christmas,” she says.
Severus tenses, looking at her, and then his lips curl. “Isn’t it?”
The swing beside Severus is free—all of them are, in fact. No one else is in the park.
Lily refuses to sit. She moves forward until her knees are close enough to touch Severus’ bent ones. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.”
Severus is wearing nothing but a black jumper and dark trousers. He’s trembling and Lily knows he must be freezing. She wants to take off her new coat, which she had grabbed on the way out of the house, and drape it over him.
“I finished reading the book you gave me for Christmas,” she says.
Severus is silent.
“It was enchanting,” she says and laughs at her own joke.
Severus raises his eyebrow above the eye that’s not hurt.
“Petunia. She got bloody infuriated earlier because I used the word ‘enchanting’ to describe my new coat.”
Severus’ mouth tightens. “I’m not surprised. She should respect magic—the power those with it wield. She’ll be sorry one day if she’s not careful.”
Lily stills, foreboding curling in her stomach. “Severus…”
“Evans, you know it’s true.” Severus’ voice is powerful. Enchanting. “We have this amazing power and she wants it for her own.”
“I know,” Lily says.
“The coat?” Severus asks, looking up at her, squinting his right eye against the pale light of the sun.
“What?”
“Is that coat your new—as you said—enchanting present?”
Lily grins. “Why yes, it is.” She spins around, her arms spread and her red hair floating in the wind.
“D’you like it?” she asks when she’s still again.
Severus is quiet, seriousness stealing his expression.
She laughs. “It wasn’t meant to be a difficult question, Severus.” She is about to ask Severus if he wants to go for a walk, when he speaks.
“I do.”
“You do?” she repeats.
“I like it.”
His words sink in and she grins in the face of his life-or-death seriousness. “Oh, really?” Severus’ cheeks flush. “Well, it is green.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
She hits him on the arm gently. “And here I thought you were colour-blind.”
“I’m glad I’m not,” he says and then his cheeks inexplicably flush.
Lily stares at him for a moment as the snow starts falling lightly around them. “’m sorry about your eye.”
Severus’ shoulders tense. “I don’t need your pity.”
“I’m not pitying you, you git!” She steps forward so that their knees are touching through their clothes. “I am sorry.”
Severus searches her eyes for something, for some proof that she’s genuine. I wish you had someone to love you as you deserve to be loved, she thinks but does not say.
So instead she leans down towards Severus’ face. His eyes widen—almost in alarm—but he stays absolutely still.
Lily leans closer, her breath warm and her breaths quick, and she leans in too close.
Severus’ eyelids drift closed and she notices he has unnaturally long black eyelashes sweeping his pale cheeks.
Your eyelashes are beautiful, she thinks but does not say.
From so close, his eye looks even more horrendous. She kisses the skin of his closed, bruised eyelid, and she hears his breath hitch.
She pulls away and looks. Severus’ eyes are still closed, his long fingers are gripping the chains of the swing as if holding on for dear life.
After he opens his eyes, he doesn’t close them again.
“Want to walk?” she asks.
“Yes.”
They walk as the snow swirls about them and after ten minutes of silence, Severus tells her about his eye. She listens, as she always does.
iv.
It’s a seemingly normal May afternoon at Hogwarts. The Gryffindors and Slytherins have double Defence Against the Dark Arts with Professor Herald. It is not infrequent for these lessons to end with more than one student—usually at least one Marauder and Severus—in the hospital wing or in detention, and sometimes, both.
This lesson is quickly heading towards the ‘both’ outcome.
The students had been partnered together and were supposed to be practising shield charms. Herald, being an utter idiot, had partnered Lily with Potter.
“You can actually try to hex me,” Lily says to Potter. She is bored.
“But, my dear princess, I would never hurt you,” Potter says, hazel eyes earnest.
“So I see.”
“You’re much too lovely to be placed in peril.”
“Don’t make me gag, Potter. Just try the stupid jinx.”
“No, Evans, I most certainly will not.”
“Fine,” she says through clenched teeth. She raises her wand. “Petrificus Totalus.”
Potter’s eyes widen for a moment and he starts to raise his wand. He’s too late and falls to the ground with a loud thud.
“Prongs, mate, your line was ‘Protego’,” Black calls from the other side of the room. There’s a cacophony of laughter in response.
Lily walks over to Potter slowly. “Let this be a lesson to you, Potter,” she says. She catches Severus’ eye from across the room. He’s smirking as he nods his approval, and Lily feels herself glow.
“Finite Incantantem,” she says. Potter raises himself from the ground in awkward movements.
“Wow, Evans,” he breathes. “That was incredible.”
“Oh, God,” Lily says.
Lily is saved from further prevarication when Professor Herald appears at their side. His normally friendly face is marred with lines of frustration. “Mr Potter, I assure you, Miss Evans is more than capable of handling herself.”
“Potter wants to handle her, all right!” Black calls, and Pettigrew begins to shake with silent laughter, turning purple. Even Lupin is trembling with laughter—until Lily glares at him. Severus looks mutinous.
“Black, I did not ask for commentary,” Professor Herald says. His eyes search the room. “Ah, Snape. Come partner Potter. Avery, you, with Evans.”
Lily cringes. She hates Avery, the nearest and dearest of Severus’ ring of awful friends. But even more worrisome than Avery being given tacit permission to hex her was the pairing of Potter and Severus.
“Let’s see what you got, Evans,” Avery says, sneer in place, and Lily knows that if they weren’t in a classroom and within hearing range of a professor, Avery would be calling her something far worse.
“Go to hell,” Lily says. In a flash, her wand is moving and so is she. She casts a Jelly-Legs Jinx which hits Avery squarely, and when he starts to wobble, Lily laughs.
“I’ll get you,” he whispers, cheeks red as a tomato.
“I’d like to see you try,” she retorts.
It’s impressive enough—even with his legs unsteady Avery manages to get off a good jinx, one Lily doesn’t recognize. It comes right for her, but she’s faster.
“Protego!” she shouts.
The shield effectively blocks the spell and Avery’s jinx rebounds and hits him. Nothing happens at first and Lily starts to think the jinx was useless. But then Avery holds his fingers in front of his face, as if waiting for something. Something does happen. His fingers start to swell—first, at a barely noticeable rate, but then the expansion accelerates until they’re as large as sausages.
“Please! Help me!” he screeches. “They’ll explode!”
“I don’t know the counter-curse!” Lily yells.
Avery seems to struggle with something, and then he calls, “Snape!”
Lily is confused and turns to see Severus rush over, a fuming Potter at his heels.
Severus ignores Potter and turns his attention to Avery. After appraising the scene, Severus looks at Lily quickly and then looks back to Avery, eyes determined. He casts a counter-curse of some kind. Avery’s fingers cease their growth and begin to shrink to their normal size.
Lily turns away.
The implications are clear to her immediately. And to Professor Herald, too, if his next words are anything to go by: “Snape, my office, tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” Severus says.
“What was that about?” Potter mumbles to Black.
“No idea,” Black answers.
Lily looks at Lupin, and he looks back. His expression confirms her fear.
“That’s all for today! Remember the eighteen inches on how to cast effective shield charms, due next lesson,” Professor Herald calls over the din of rustling bags and talking students.
Lily is barely listening as she storms out of the room. She wants to get away and think. She hurries down the corridor.
Severus catches up with her in a matter of seconds. “Evans, I need to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t.” She increases her pace.
“Yes, I do.” He grabs her shoulder and his hand is there for only a moment, before she knocks it away.
She turns around. “Leave—me—alone,” she enunciates slowly but carefully.
His eyes are alive and fearful. “No,” he repeats. “Let’s go in there.” He nods towards a classroom.
Lily starts to shake her head once more—really, can’t he take a hint?—when he says, “Please.”
Her lungs struggle for oxygen and Lily nods, albeit hesitantly. She leads them into the classroom and closes the door behind them. Severus casts a locking charm and an advanced silencing spell she’s never heard.
“Lily, look—I—”
“No, you look. I know you told him that spell. How else would you know the counter-curse?”
Severus looks at the ground.
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he says.
Severus looks up again and his face is so full of guilt, she stops. His eyes are bleak and then she knows. “You,” she whispers.
He steps closer and she backs up, her thighs hitting the back of a desk. She barely registers her movements in her horror. “I—I knew you created spells, Severus, but I—”
“Evans, I…”
“That was horrible, Severus. How could you do that?”
Severus doesn’t answer and Lily knows she doesn’t want to hear the answer or the explanation—especially because she knows there’s not a satisfactory one.
“You’re so much better than this,” she thinks but does not say. Her hands shake.
Severus moves closer till his knees nearly brush hers. She’s sitting on the desk now in her effort to keep her distance. It’s easier to think—to be angry—when Severus isn’t standing so near. Since Christmas she’s realised what the tingling means.
“I’m sorry,” Severus whispers and she nearly believes him.
“Are you?” is all she can muster.
“I’ll stop.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, you won’t.” She’s looking anywhere but at him, avoiding his eyes, which she’s sure are black and intense and would strip her bare in a heartbeat. He’d see the truth as evident as her heartbeat, which is fluttering out of control at his nearness.
“I will. I’ll stop.” His fingers brush against her jaw in a touch that’s foreign and gentle.
She looks at him.
He’s apparently struggling with words he’s thinking but probably will not say.
“Say it,” she implores.
“I’d rather show you,” he says and his fingers tighten their hold on her jaw. He leans down and Lily’s eyes stay open in fear that she’ll forget a moment of what’s about to happen—or that she’s only hallucinating and if she closes her eyes it won’t be real.
Chapped lips brush hers in a chaste kiss—once, twice, and then Lily breaths, her lips parting on a sigh. Her hands go to Severus’ shoulders, tentatively, and then wind around his neck. She licks at his lips and he groans into the kiss. He steps closer and soon they’re pressed against each other in a disused classroom, tongues searching out the other.
Their tongues slide together for only a moment before Severus pulls away, gasping. “Lily,” he says, and she smiles at her given name on his lips. It’s a rarity.
He is rare.
Her arms are still around his neck. “That was my first kiss,” she admits and then remembers Lupin. “First real kiss.”
Severus looks surprised and then strangely intent. He eyes her lips and leans in again. She stops him with a finger to his lips, which are thin—but also soft.
“You have to promise me you’ll stop,” she says.
“I promise,” he says immediately.
The promise is said too fast, fleeting words that are automatic in the face of an impending loss. Lily knows they are fleeting, but she smiles anyway.
“Okay, Severus.”
He’s looking at her mouth again.
“Kiss me,” she whispers, and he does.
As their tongues find each other again and Severus stands between her thighs, she thinks of Avery’s swelling fingers, and thinks but does not say, I hope you can change.
She remembers thinking fourth year would be the same and thinks of all the changes she and Severus have undergone. She smiles into the kiss.
They had both changed, together.
Perhaps Severus would change, eventually, for the right reasons.