Home, Somehow (Lily/Alice, PG-13)
Title: Home, Somehow
Pairing: Lily/Alice
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~5,200
Summary: During the war, Lily tries to find her place.
Notes: written as a gift for escribo in the 2012 femmefest exchange. Love and thanks to drinkingcocoa for the insights and beta. <3
Home, Somehow
Like James had asked her, Lily joined the Order.
But not, as he thought, because he had asked her.
She did it because when she walked the long walk to the front of the Great Hall to collect her diploma from a Dumbledore whose smile was both genuine and hesitant and accepted the applause for her top marks from the Great Hall, strained despite valiant Gryffindor table efforts, she realised that there was really nothing beyond this. It was only a matter of time before even this final stronghold was breached. It was only a matter of time before every single face that was turned to her in sympathy would be frozen into servitude, or betrayal, and if not either of those then: death. As they wandered the Hall her eyes passed over Severus' face, which to her seemed frozen already; he was clapping, slowly, but his mouth had a bitter set to it, and his eyes were cold, without a spark of recognition. She knew with a startling clarity that this was what the world was heading for, this cutting of ties, this dissolution of bonds.
As she clutched the parchment of her diploma so tightly the rough edges cut into her hand, she realised that there was no place for her, anywhere, because this was her home now whether she wanted it to be or not, and now it was turning into a place that could no longer hold her. Unless she fought.
So what she told Remus later - “I just want to help, Remus, I can't stand just watching things happen!” - was true, but she also knew that it wasn't as straight-forward as she had made it sound (and she was sure Remus knew that, like he knew almost everything she didn't tell him). She needed a new home, and the ways things were now there really was no other place left to go. The two reasonings blended together until sometimes she genuinely wasn't sure whether she only did this for herself, or for everyone else.
*
So she joined the Order the day after, graduation already a shadow past and a sleepless night piled on her shoulders, and James smiled at her in that goofy way he had that made her simultaneously want to ruffle his hair and turn her back on him. She knew he hoped this would bring them closer together. He had changed in the past months; sometimes when her eye had happened to fall on him, she had been surprised to find that he was looking back at her with a certain seriousness that he had never had. She couldn't say that she disapproved of this new, more mature James Potter. Yet, she also couldn't say that it made her any more inclined to like him. It simply made being around Remus more serene. Remus, who she definitely considered a real friend - he hadn't asked her to join the Order, after all, and this already showed her that he knew her so much better than James ever did, was so much more in tune with the way she made her decisions.
She didn't know what to say to James in response to his expectant smile. She didn't have anything in particular to say.
*
Dumbledore was worried about her, she could tell, but she could also tell he was by now well acquainted with the stubbornness lurking under the calm surface of her words. He never objected.
“The Order is open to anyone willing to fight,” he said, and touched her shoulder - the first time he had touched her in all those years. His hair seemed greyer even than the previous day.
“I'm willing,” she said, and felt her heart beating in her chest, keeping her alive, pumping sleeplessly, making her a target, making her a possibility, granting her the body and the mind she needed to be a part of life and - more and more possible now - of death. She wondered if Dumbledore could feel her pulse.
*
The first meeting took place a week later, in a dingy, damp cellar where they had been brought by a nauseating string of Portkeys, charmed to bring them from point A to B by passing through every other letter of the alphabet so tracing them would take too much time to find them still there. Lily had no idea where she was, and supposed it was for the best.
She unstuck herself from Remus and his group as soon as she could. They were only there together by accident, after all, and there were things she needed to do on her own - finding her way in this newness was one of them. Remus sent her a glance from where he was standing with his friends, tense, half-understanding, half-questioning. She answered it with a neutral look.
The talk was dark and urgent. Dumbledore introduced her and the other new members with something of a reluctance. The names that the others grunted out wearily rang a lot of bells - older graduates from Hogwarts, mostly - but most of them slipped from her consciousness almost immediately. She felt a bit dizzy.
“So you only graduated last week?” the girl next to Lily spoke under her breath, undercutting Lily's apprehensive attention to what one of the senior members was saying. She glanced sideways, and she recognised her; the paleness of the face, offset by two bright points of red blooming on the cheekbones, more pointed than she remembered, the dark hair spiky and short where it had been long before.
“Alice?” Lily ventured hesitantly. Alice had been two years above her - they had only ever spoken once, when Alice had congratulated her on becoming a Prefect for Gryffindor, just as Alice herself had been made Head Girl for Hufflepuff. Their paths had never really crossed after that, though Alice had always continued to smile at her in the hallways for the remainder of her seventh year, never less than bright, never faltering, even as Lily herself had increasingly felt less and less capable of smiling.
Alice smiled. “Didn't think you'd remember me.”
“Of course I remember,” Lily said, though it had been a bit of a guess.
Alice seemed to know she was only half-truthful and gave her a half-grin in response. “I barely remember myself,” she then said, unconcerned, “with all the Polyjuicing and hiding.” Her words were a bit incongruous with the softness in her eyes. “Welcome, Lily Evans. Try to remember your name.”
*
Dumbledore told the new members to pair off with a more senior member, someone they could default to if the situation asked for it. He looked worried, traced the movement of Remus to Bones and the too-long hesitation of Sirius and James, who seemed to have to unstick themselves from each other physically.
Alice and Lily paired off as though it had been decided between them, though it wasn't - and Alice, unexpectedly, took her hand, quietly, partners now, and it felt like more of a heavy moment than it had any right to be; except then Lily remembered what kind of promise this was, really, I will protect you with my own life if I have to, and well, then it seemed fitting to squeeze back into the fingers, because how could the pressure of that ever be expressed by words, really?
And she felt a bit more like herself again, as though with a simple touch understanding and empathy and the twist of misery in her stomach were restored to her in a horrible, wonderful transaction of humanity.
*
“Now,” Alice said, and Lily went flying at the word like a spring uncoiling, not even sure where she had to go, but guided by the dots of light lining her vision.
She grabbed at the body blindly, and pulled at it - it didn't give until Alice took its legs and hauled it up together with her. Now seriously impeded, they limped further.
Lily couldn't help the scream when the first streak of light almost grazed them, but she managed to hold onto the body.
Resting the weight of the body on her knees so she could let go of it without it dropping to the ground, Lily shot off a streak of red into the direction that was leaking green and blue at them, and they scrambled over hot rubble, smoking, until Alice said, without voice, almost: “There!”
The portkey was hot to the touch from the fire, but it was functional, and in the dizzying, overpowering tug that took them from death to life Alice's hands closed over her wrist somehow.
And then that Bones was alive under their hands as they flopped onto the floor of the headquarters, well, that that made Lily collapse against Alice even further, made her head spin harder, made her think oh thank Merlin thank you thank you thank you thank you whoever it is that might be listening in the first real rush of feeling she'd had in weeks, felt as natural as Alice's hand coming up to tangle itself in the red mess of hair falling off her shoulder.
“Great work,” Moody told them, gruffly, busying himself with Bones.
Alice's hand tugged lightly on her hair, replacing the words air had stolen from them.
*
The first time Alice allowed Lily to take the lead and stuck close to her, watching her back, Lily felt a huge thrill of pride that was tangible even over the overwhelming sharpness of looking out for the possible singe of counter-spells.
*
And whenever she allowed herself a moment to think about what she was doing - whenever she couldn't help it, whenever they'd fallen into headquarters again, alive, at least for now, and the what am I doing what am I doing was too loud to be silenced - she felt such an overwhelming rush of admiration for Alice and the way she never even seemed to question the line of running she chose, and the way threw herself into her spells, and the way Lily had her seen bite and scratch and kick when she'd been disarmed; she fought with such jaw-clenched conviction it seemed for the entirety of every battle that she was absolute, wholly, honestly sure why she was doing it.
And then they looked at each other after, when nothing was quite as clear anymore as the bone-chilling certainty of mortal danger, but when Lily said to Alice, trying to control her heart: “I've never seen anything like that,” it was true in different ways.
*
“Okay,” Alice said, and it was the unshaken normality in her voice that brought Lily a bit to herself again; and the way Alice drew close to her back, not quite touching, but still tangible, warm, grounded her in reality and in herself so much that she had to close her eyes for a moment at the sudden, clear realisation of her body. “You're okay,” Alice told her, just as a new, minor explosion made them shudder closer together - Alice's body touched hers where she had leaned close to her back, crouching over her, leaving a spark of there-ness. “You're okay,” she said again when the sound waves had receded - or at least, Lily thought she did, because she couldn't see it, and she couldn't really hear it, with her ears ringing, either, but she somehow was quite sure she'd said it.
And as if Alice knew, she put her mouth close to Lily's ear and said: “Come on. Are you ready?”
And then she waited, mercifully, allowing Lily to lean back into her for a split second, that one moment of quiet she needed to remember her name. “Yes,” she said, and opened her eyes, though she hadn't realised she'd closed them.
There was another moment of stillness between them as Alice with a gentleness that seemed impossible at such a moment curled her hand around Lily's shoulder and brought her up, standing before she was even aware of it, tugging her upwards with a trembling slowness amidst the shudders of a new explosion around them.
Lily felt against her ear, rather than heard, the “Go.”
And she went. Alice was like a gust of wind behind her, pushing her on, until they lost contact and the dizzying clarity of Alice's hand on her shoulder was lost, but she was still there, Lily could feel the push of her presence; and then something else took over, and she dodged a curse that was too much like the innocence of a field of grass for the darkness it contained - and that it was her body that saved itself, the muscles leaping to attention in self-preservation, that she survived the random, incomprehensibly real gusts of death around her just because her body said no, would seem utterly incredible later. But there was no seeming now, there was just running, there wasn't even being, as she ran, and ran, and the house appeared like a beacon in the night, light, despite the dark flames licking at it from the outside.
Time returned, sudden vertigo, sudden darkness, mutedness of sound already muted by explosion-damaged ears inside the hallway as hands pulled her inside, and Alice was behind her again. She stumbled into the grip of, she didn't know who, she didn't care, someone who wasn't trying to kill her, and then Alice whipped her around, hand a harsh curl on her arm.
“You're okay, you're - Lily,” Alice said, and only then Lily realised that she had been breathing too fast for any oxygen to get into her body, and her lungs stopped working for a bit before slamming back into action; the body the best cure for itself, and Alice as a tangible presence, close to her face as if passing her breath.
“Shit,” someone murmured, and it was Bones, a hunched mountain of a man.
“What is it?” Alice asked, but she kept on looking at Lily.
“We might have lost Prewett,” he said, and then he was gone, and the words fluttered down like leaves, almost meaningless.
Alice uncurled her hand around Lily, and it felt like the loss of one of her own limbs.
“You were brilliant,” Alice said, eyes wide.
Lily's body felt like it was swimming back up from dark depths, as the pressure on her lungs lessened. “What - what do you mean?” she half-gasped.
“Your Stunners,” Alice said. “They took out about half of them.”
And if Lily couldn't remember that, that was okay, because Alice's mouth - flushed with adrenalin, soot-stained, a smear of black and red in the paleness of her face - quirked in to a smile of such sincerity Lily couldn't recall when was the last time she'd seen anything like it.
*
Like a small miracle, or maybe a huge one, Gideon Prewett made it inside. He was bleeding heavily from his head, and Moody tied the wound with a strip of tablecloth and ordered him to go sleep, after slipping him one of the flasks he always carried, and looked a bit worried, but not enough to really pay attention to, because everyone looked a bit worried these days, even Moody; and if Lily didn't pick and choose what to feel unsettled by she felt that she would die from over-exposure even before any Death Eater had to point his wand at her.
And that would be just silly.
*
It was supposed to be a rescue mission, but Amalfa Herbert had been well and long dead when the Order arrived, and now they were under siege, themselves. The magic bonds were holding, for now, because the house had its own, ancient protection, but time was only one of the many things they couldn't stop, and with it the small, relentless chipping at their defenses. There were six of them, far too many any way they looked at it, and they'd messed up sending so many people to the same target - and Lily knew, with an unsettling finality, that it had been decided because she and Remus were part of the group, so young, so new, and the Order was as human as their opponents weren't, and they were protected whether they wanted it or not.
And their opponents were sly and cunning and of course knew all about that, and had sprung the trap, knowing how many lives the Order would put at stake to ensure its new generation.
Remus glanced at her from across the arresting incongruity of the living room that had belonged to a stranger, someone they'd tried to save and hadn't. His mouth was a thin, hard line, and he looked far too much like a wild animal than he should have. She could tell that he was thinking the same thing.
Alice seemed to be able to tell, too, because she leaned into Lily from where she was sitting next to her, still catching her breath, and said: “Not your fault.”
Lily closed her eyes, wondering when it was that Alice began to be able to read her.
*
“We're in trouble,” Moody said, to no one in particular, so to everyone, really, as they all stood around in the kitchen, which was the back room and their stronghold, having fortified it with every protective spell they knew, and that's when Lily realised that there were forces that even he couldn't weather, which felt like such a ridiculous shock that she had to turn her eyes from him and the strange clenchedness on his marred face to hide that tears were pressing hotly against her eyes.
Remus looked at her, and said nothing.
*
It felt strange, the way time curved around them in that place. Outside the attacks continued, but the house remained unbreached. And already it seemed like they had been there hours, though the slant of moonlight tumbling unconcernedly through the high kitchen window had barely shifted, though it maybe seemed a bit more reddish now. The presence of someone she didn't know was arresting in his strangeness; she flipped through Amalfa's cooking books, some Muggle, some magical, and tried to read something into the particular kinds of spirits she had stowed away under the stove - a luxury in times like these. She would have been saving them for something, and for a moment Lily tried to imagine what it could be - someone hiding, in flight, running from the terror that shook their world, plotting to return as soon as possible, maybe, to celebrate, to drink this, to return to the steady warmth of Amalfa?
It was a bit like a ritual, the way they took out the bottles, more because of its lack of tradition or gesture than because of any explicit meaning, but sometimes the lack of something is the presence of something, which was something that life, and war, had taught all of them.
Either way, Alice looked at Lily from across the circle of five as they all stared at the assorted bottles between them - and Lily realised that she wasn't looking at the bottles, either, because she caught that look, didn't she, and she caught how frayed at the edges Alice seemed for just a moment, before she smiled and was Alice again.
*
“We're ruining our fighting chances, you know,” Moody said, but he didn't object, and were things really that hopeless then, Lily thought for a moment, watching him as he took a swig of Firewhiskey.
“Courage comes in liquid form sometimes,” Alice said, “if I recall what you said to me once.”
Moody glared at her. “I was talking about Polyjuice Potion.”
Alice shrugged, and Bones smiled a grim smile. “Same difference,” he said, and reached for the bottle as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
No one said the: there's hardly any fighting chances left to ruin.
*
And in that twist of time and a strange, pressured domesticity, Alice and Lily cooked the eggs they'd found in the pantry, and Alice even cut some of the fresh parsley that still stood gleaming a dark green in its small pot - the innocence of a field of grass again, this time not grazing their face, not advancing with an unstoppability that was enough to make anyone cry, anyone who wasn't facing it at least - and scissored it silently over the omelette, bypassing her wand.
“Lily,” Alice said at one point, the small flashes of herb fluttering from her fingers like alternate-reality snowflakes, and there was a small point of heat in the way the name curled around her tongue. “I'm sorry,” she then said, and it was wrong, it was all wrong, and they really weren't supposed to acknowledge that they could die, maybe would this time, so Lily said so, and turned her face so her forehead was touching Alice's cheek.
“There is nowhere else I could be,” she said, surprised by the heat in her gut, and the sharpness of her conviction.
Because, as strange and stilled and timeless and absolutely monstrous as it was, this was more like home than anything she'd felt in a long time.
*
“They could still try to rescue us, you know,” Bones said, sounding unconcerned, though that was probably mostly the alcohol talking.
A look at Amalfa Herbert's Muggle-style clock told Lily that they'd only been there two hours. She reeled a bit from that, because it felt like lifetimes ago that she'd fallen through the door, into a small net of safety, pressurised from all sides, but still there.
“They could,” Moody said gruffly, and then, “but I sincerely hope they're not that stupid.”
And Remus, who hadn't really said anything to Lily at all, said: “I can't help but disagree.” And he looked grim, and young, and stained, and determined, and Lily wondered for a moment when she'd stopped being his friend, because who was she, and she stepped over to him and wrapped her arms around him in a hug that was long overdue.
By the way he first jerked away from her and then carefully melted into her, arm coming around her back awkwardly, she knew that it was something that he might have needed.
She was okay. She was Lily.
*
And then of course they didn't sleep, curled against each other, pressed into the furthest corner of the kitchen as though that would make any difference. Moody and Bones hovered closer to the door, doing nothing much, Moody muttering to himself in a strangely soothing stream of damaged voice.
Remus' shoulder was pressing lightly into hers, his body angled away, and incongruously, impossibly, he did seem to be asleep, or otherwise he'd mastered the art of faking it perfectly, which wouldn't surprise her with friends like James and Sirius. Alice came round the other side, taking Lily's jaw into long fingers and tucking her face into the melt of Alice's shoulder as though it was something they did every day.
Lily allowed it. In fact, she pressed into it, resisting the urge to bring up a hand to press at the play of blood in Alice's neck, just to remind herself what living felt like, exactly. For herself, the hammer of the blood in her head that wasn't due to mortal danger was a sensation that had been so absent for a long while that she had to consciously take a breath and try to get the rhythm of her pulse under control before it beat out of her. They sat for a long while, unmoving. She then thought of Remus and James and Sirius and Peter for a bit, and how... how much more of a personhood they seemed to have than she sometimes did, and she could easily imagine, slipping her eyes shut, how James and Sirius would be breaking down the headquarters right now, in more than just their usual mania, a fear between them that none of them really should have known at their age. Remus shifted against her, as though he could hear her thoughts. It was one reassurance that she was certain he couldn't.
“You're okay,” Alice said, the whisper stirring stray strands of hair on Lily's head.
“Yeah,” Lily offered, uselessly.
“I'm okay,” Alice said.
“Yeah,” Lily breathed, her heart feeling like it was trying to get out of her chest.
And it only took a little tilt of their heads to be kissing - if that's what it was, it was more of a sharing of breath, of mouths pressing together almost motionlessly, passing something desperate and gloriously living between them.
Alice's tongue was gentle and pliant as it came to tease at Lily's lips, questioning. And then it was a kiss, definitely, as Lily couldn't help the hand coming up to grasp at Alice's shirt as she opened her lips, answering the question, because how could the pressure of it ever be expressed in words, really? Alice moulded against her, body a curl of tense relaxation, fingers playing over her cheek as she kissed her languidly, slowly, mapping the different textures in Lily's mouth with an easiness that seemed like it had no right to exist.
And all of the things that would have brought her to pull back, wait, what am I doing and I was going to try not to fall in love with anyone at least for a bit and Remus is right here, all of them didn't matter in the lurch of time they had found themselves in, and the it's Alice knocked all of them out, anyway, because she was Alice, and she was such a warm, tangible, living thing next to Lily, and she was so finely drawn, so uniquely her, with that scent, the small sound she made against Lily that Lily wasn't sure she could handle any of this at all.
When they broke apart, time seemed to resume.
Alice said: “If we die -”
And Lily cut her off: “We won't.” Because all of a sudden she was certain of it. And then, heart hammering, she said: “And this is about life for me.” Because oh, how she'd wanted this, even as she'd tried to erase it under the pressures of their world, and then it felt slightly wrong for a bit that it should have happened like this, at this dangling thread on the unravelling end of life, but sometimes choices made themselves, and there was really nothing to it.
Alice trailed a finger down the line of her jaw, into the small fold of her neck, into the tuck of skin at her collarbones, and then over the barried of her clothes, the swell of her breasts, heaving with breath and want. “For me too,” she sighed, and to Lily the world narrowed down for a bit to Alice's mouth, and her teeth nipping carefully at Lily's lips, and the slight taste of alcohol on her tongue, mixed with something that tasted exactly as she smelled, Alice, sweet and earthy, and hints of smoke of explosions, and parsley, fresh like a green field.
*
“Idiots,” Moody cursed, but then the shouting reached Lily, too, and people banged on their defenses, and they were bangs of life, not death - Moody undid the bonds holding their fort, and James was the first who came toppling through the door, followed by a literally smoking Fabian Prewett, and a blood-streaked Caradoc Dearborn, looking slightly crazy as he grinned at them.
“Well,” James said, starting in the direction of Remus, who was to his feet already, looking astounded, “that was easy.” And then he fainted into Remus, who half-embraced him to hold him up, and the huff of incredulous laughter that forced its way out of him was one of the most extraordinary things Lily had ever heard, second only to the way breath was curling its way out of Alice's mouth as it approached, and attached itself to hers, kiss of life, not kiss of near-death.
*
Getting to them was only part one, obviously. The rescuers had broken through the line that had been sticking to the house, and now they had to use that break, now, now, now - they barely had time to bring James back to before Moody said, his mouth drawn into his lop-sided, manic grin: “All right, you lot, don't get yourselves killed. Fabian, he's upstairs. I secured him. He's all right. Get him down.”
And getting back out was mostly Alice and Lily, attuned to each other, sending Stupefys and Expelliarmuses flying as they went, and Lily had never felt so energised - the remaining Death Eaters scattered, swearing, as the force of Lily's infamous Stunners started slashing them down.
“Why did we come to save you, again?” Dearborn panted, trying to keep up.
Lily sent a flash of red over his shoulder, playing into the sound coming from Alice. “Just using - what you're giving me,” she huffed, breathlessly, honestly, and then twirled around again, body processing the things outside of it in such a way that it surprised itself at moments.
And then it was over, quite suddenly, and they were alone and Gideon Prewett was limping through the door of the house, smiling, supported by his brother, and Moody was pulling at the group, guiding them on. Alice looked at her with eyes that were so wide Lily could see the night reflected in them.
*
“Thank you,” Lily said to James, back at the headquarters.
“Merlin, Evans,” James said, looking a bit drawn, a bit pale, less fidgety than usual, “we can't afford to lose a fighter like you. That was incredible.” Sirius crashed into the room, looking livid, and threw himself at Remus, who let out another one of his incredulous laughs.
“They wouldn't let me, Moony, these fucking wankers - I tore down this place - and this bloke -” he said, and punched James with what didn't seem like a joking strength, “didn't help me, and I swear to Merlin -” And the friends fell into each other with a breathless relief that was tangible, and wild, and Lily turned around to get away from the overpowering extent of their presence; her heart felt like it was being squeezed.
Alice was silently watching her.
“You're okay,” Lily said, and the blending of their languages felt so much like a kiss already she couldn't help the closing of the distance, and the movement into the opening curl of Alice's body, warm, living, home, somehow.
*
And of course it wasn't over that way, but Alice pulled the covers over their heads, and laughed when the dust that that stirred made Lily sneeze, and they were alone in a swell of heat and peace and the words passed between their skins. It was like a small slice of private universe, the way the sheets shut them off from everything else.
“We're one hell of a team,” Alice said, and leaned down and licked unapologetically at the point in Lily's neck where her life strained against the weak surface of her skin.
“Merlin, yes,” she sighed, and pushed upward, into that point of fluttering want, and they were more than okay.
Pairing: Lily/Alice
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~5,200
Summary: During the war, Lily tries to find her place.
Notes: written as a gift for escribo in the 2012 femmefest exchange. Love and thanks to drinkingcocoa for the insights and beta. <3
Home, Somehow
Like James had asked her, Lily joined the Order.
But not, as he thought, because he had asked her.
She did it because when she walked the long walk to the front of the Great Hall to collect her diploma from a Dumbledore whose smile was both genuine and hesitant and accepted the applause for her top marks from the Great Hall, strained despite valiant Gryffindor table efforts, she realised that there was really nothing beyond this. It was only a matter of time before even this final stronghold was breached. It was only a matter of time before every single face that was turned to her in sympathy would be frozen into servitude, or betrayal, and if not either of those then: death. As they wandered the Hall her eyes passed over Severus' face, which to her seemed frozen already; he was clapping, slowly, but his mouth had a bitter set to it, and his eyes were cold, without a spark of recognition. She knew with a startling clarity that this was what the world was heading for, this cutting of ties, this dissolution of bonds.
As she clutched the parchment of her diploma so tightly the rough edges cut into her hand, she realised that there was no place for her, anywhere, because this was her home now whether she wanted it to be or not, and now it was turning into a place that could no longer hold her. Unless she fought.
So what she told Remus later - “I just want to help, Remus, I can't stand just watching things happen!” - was true, but she also knew that it wasn't as straight-forward as she had made it sound (and she was sure Remus knew that, like he knew almost everything she didn't tell him). She needed a new home, and the ways things were now there really was no other place left to go. The two reasonings blended together until sometimes she genuinely wasn't sure whether she only did this for herself, or for everyone else.
*
So she joined the Order the day after, graduation already a shadow past and a sleepless night piled on her shoulders, and James smiled at her in that goofy way he had that made her simultaneously want to ruffle his hair and turn her back on him. She knew he hoped this would bring them closer together. He had changed in the past months; sometimes when her eye had happened to fall on him, she had been surprised to find that he was looking back at her with a certain seriousness that he had never had. She couldn't say that she disapproved of this new, more mature James Potter. Yet, she also couldn't say that it made her any more inclined to like him. It simply made being around Remus more serene. Remus, who she definitely considered a real friend - he hadn't asked her to join the Order, after all, and this already showed her that he knew her so much better than James ever did, was so much more in tune with the way she made her decisions.
She didn't know what to say to James in response to his expectant smile. She didn't have anything in particular to say.
*
Dumbledore was worried about her, she could tell, but she could also tell he was by now well acquainted with the stubbornness lurking under the calm surface of her words. He never objected.
“The Order is open to anyone willing to fight,” he said, and touched her shoulder - the first time he had touched her in all those years. His hair seemed greyer even than the previous day.
“I'm willing,” she said, and felt her heart beating in her chest, keeping her alive, pumping sleeplessly, making her a target, making her a possibility, granting her the body and the mind she needed to be a part of life and - more and more possible now - of death. She wondered if Dumbledore could feel her pulse.
*
The first meeting took place a week later, in a dingy, damp cellar where they had been brought by a nauseating string of Portkeys, charmed to bring them from point A to B by passing through every other letter of the alphabet so tracing them would take too much time to find them still there. Lily had no idea where she was, and supposed it was for the best.
She unstuck herself from Remus and his group as soon as she could. They were only there together by accident, after all, and there were things she needed to do on her own - finding her way in this newness was one of them. Remus sent her a glance from where he was standing with his friends, tense, half-understanding, half-questioning. She answered it with a neutral look.
The talk was dark and urgent. Dumbledore introduced her and the other new members with something of a reluctance. The names that the others grunted out wearily rang a lot of bells - older graduates from Hogwarts, mostly - but most of them slipped from her consciousness almost immediately. She felt a bit dizzy.
“So you only graduated last week?” the girl next to Lily spoke under her breath, undercutting Lily's apprehensive attention to what one of the senior members was saying. She glanced sideways, and she recognised her; the paleness of the face, offset by two bright points of red blooming on the cheekbones, more pointed than she remembered, the dark hair spiky and short where it had been long before.
“Alice?” Lily ventured hesitantly. Alice had been two years above her - they had only ever spoken once, when Alice had congratulated her on becoming a Prefect for Gryffindor, just as Alice herself had been made Head Girl for Hufflepuff. Their paths had never really crossed after that, though Alice had always continued to smile at her in the hallways for the remainder of her seventh year, never less than bright, never faltering, even as Lily herself had increasingly felt less and less capable of smiling.
Alice smiled. “Didn't think you'd remember me.”
“Of course I remember,” Lily said, though it had been a bit of a guess.
Alice seemed to know she was only half-truthful and gave her a half-grin in response. “I barely remember myself,” she then said, unconcerned, “with all the Polyjuicing and hiding.” Her words were a bit incongruous with the softness in her eyes. “Welcome, Lily Evans. Try to remember your name.”
*
Dumbledore told the new members to pair off with a more senior member, someone they could default to if the situation asked for it. He looked worried, traced the movement of Remus to Bones and the too-long hesitation of Sirius and James, who seemed to have to unstick themselves from each other physically.
Alice and Lily paired off as though it had been decided between them, though it wasn't - and Alice, unexpectedly, took her hand, quietly, partners now, and it felt like more of a heavy moment than it had any right to be; except then Lily remembered what kind of promise this was, really, I will protect you with my own life if I have to, and well, then it seemed fitting to squeeze back into the fingers, because how could the pressure of that ever be expressed by words, really?
And she felt a bit more like herself again, as though with a simple touch understanding and empathy and the twist of misery in her stomach were restored to her in a horrible, wonderful transaction of humanity.
*
“Now,” Alice said, and Lily went flying at the word like a spring uncoiling, not even sure where she had to go, but guided by the dots of light lining her vision.
She grabbed at the body blindly, and pulled at it - it didn't give until Alice took its legs and hauled it up together with her. Now seriously impeded, they limped further.
Lily couldn't help the scream when the first streak of light almost grazed them, but she managed to hold onto the body.
Resting the weight of the body on her knees so she could let go of it without it dropping to the ground, Lily shot off a streak of red into the direction that was leaking green and blue at them, and they scrambled over hot rubble, smoking, until Alice said, without voice, almost: “There!”
The portkey was hot to the touch from the fire, but it was functional, and in the dizzying, overpowering tug that took them from death to life Alice's hands closed over her wrist somehow.
And then that Bones was alive under their hands as they flopped onto the floor of the headquarters, well, that that made Lily collapse against Alice even further, made her head spin harder, made her think oh thank Merlin thank you thank you thank you thank you whoever it is that might be listening in the first real rush of feeling she'd had in weeks, felt as natural as Alice's hand coming up to tangle itself in the red mess of hair falling off her shoulder.
“Great work,” Moody told them, gruffly, busying himself with Bones.
Alice's hand tugged lightly on her hair, replacing the words air had stolen from them.
*
The first time Alice allowed Lily to take the lead and stuck close to her, watching her back, Lily felt a huge thrill of pride that was tangible even over the overwhelming sharpness of looking out for the possible singe of counter-spells.
*
And whenever she allowed herself a moment to think about what she was doing - whenever she couldn't help it, whenever they'd fallen into headquarters again, alive, at least for now, and the what am I doing what am I doing was too loud to be silenced - she felt such an overwhelming rush of admiration for Alice and the way she never even seemed to question the line of running she chose, and the way threw herself into her spells, and the way Lily had her seen bite and scratch and kick when she'd been disarmed; she fought with such jaw-clenched conviction it seemed for the entirety of every battle that she was absolute, wholly, honestly sure why she was doing it.
And then they looked at each other after, when nothing was quite as clear anymore as the bone-chilling certainty of mortal danger, but when Lily said to Alice, trying to control her heart: “I've never seen anything like that,” it was true in different ways.
*
“Okay,” Alice said, and it was the unshaken normality in her voice that brought Lily a bit to herself again; and the way Alice drew close to her back, not quite touching, but still tangible, warm, grounded her in reality and in herself so much that she had to close her eyes for a moment at the sudden, clear realisation of her body. “You're okay,” Alice told her, just as a new, minor explosion made them shudder closer together - Alice's body touched hers where she had leaned close to her back, crouching over her, leaving a spark of there-ness. “You're okay,” she said again when the sound waves had receded - or at least, Lily thought she did, because she couldn't see it, and she couldn't really hear it, with her ears ringing, either, but she somehow was quite sure she'd said it.
And as if Alice knew, she put her mouth close to Lily's ear and said: “Come on. Are you ready?”
And then she waited, mercifully, allowing Lily to lean back into her for a split second, that one moment of quiet she needed to remember her name. “Yes,” she said, and opened her eyes, though she hadn't realised she'd closed them.
There was another moment of stillness between them as Alice with a gentleness that seemed impossible at such a moment curled her hand around Lily's shoulder and brought her up, standing before she was even aware of it, tugging her upwards with a trembling slowness amidst the shudders of a new explosion around them.
Lily felt against her ear, rather than heard, the “Go.”
And she went. Alice was like a gust of wind behind her, pushing her on, until they lost contact and the dizzying clarity of Alice's hand on her shoulder was lost, but she was still there, Lily could feel the push of her presence; and then something else took over, and she dodged a curse that was too much like the innocence of a field of grass for the darkness it contained - and that it was her body that saved itself, the muscles leaping to attention in self-preservation, that she survived the random, incomprehensibly real gusts of death around her just because her body said no, would seem utterly incredible later. But there was no seeming now, there was just running, there wasn't even being, as she ran, and ran, and the house appeared like a beacon in the night, light, despite the dark flames licking at it from the outside.
Time returned, sudden vertigo, sudden darkness, mutedness of sound already muted by explosion-damaged ears inside the hallway as hands pulled her inside, and Alice was behind her again. She stumbled into the grip of, she didn't know who, she didn't care, someone who wasn't trying to kill her, and then Alice whipped her around, hand a harsh curl on her arm.
“You're okay, you're - Lily,” Alice said, and only then Lily realised that she had been breathing too fast for any oxygen to get into her body, and her lungs stopped working for a bit before slamming back into action; the body the best cure for itself, and Alice as a tangible presence, close to her face as if passing her breath.
“Shit,” someone murmured, and it was Bones, a hunched mountain of a man.
“What is it?” Alice asked, but she kept on looking at Lily.
“We might have lost Prewett,” he said, and then he was gone, and the words fluttered down like leaves, almost meaningless.
Alice uncurled her hand around Lily, and it felt like the loss of one of her own limbs.
“You were brilliant,” Alice said, eyes wide.
Lily's body felt like it was swimming back up from dark depths, as the pressure on her lungs lessened. “What - what do you mean?” she half-gasped.
“Your Stunners,” Alice said. “They took out about half of them.”
And if Lily couldn't remember that, that was okay, because Alice's mouth - flushed with adrenalin, soot-stained, a smear of black and red in the paleness of her face - quirked in to a smile of such sincerity Lily couldn't recall when was the last time she'd seen anything like it.
*
Like a small miracle, or maybe a huge one, Gideon Prewett made it inside. He was bleeding heavily from his head, and Moody tied the wound with a strip of tablecloth and ordered him to go sleep, after slipping him one of the flasks he always carried, and looked a bit worried, but not enough to really pay attention to, because everyone looked a bit worried these days, even Moody; and if Lily didn't pick and choose what to feel unsettled by she felt that she would die from over-exposure even before any Death Eater had to point his wand at her.
And that would be just silly.
*
It was supposed to be a rescue mission, but Amalfa Herbert had been well and long dead when the Order arrived, and now they were under siege, themselves. The magic bonds were holding, for now, because the house had its own, ancient protection, but time was only one of the many things they couldn't stop, and with it the small, relentless chipping at their defenses. There were six of them, far too many any way they looked at it, and they'd messed up sending so many people to the same target - and Lily knew, with an unsettling finality, that it had been decided because she and Remus were part of the group, so young, so new, and the Order was as human as their opponents weren't, and they were protected whether they wanted it or not.
And their opponents were sly and cunning and of course knew all about that, and had sprung the trap, knowing how many lives the Order would put at stake to ensure its new generation.
Remus glanced at her from across the arresting incongruity of the living room that had belonged to a stranger, someone they'd tried to save and hadn't. His mouth was a thin, hard line, and he looked far too much like a wild animal than he should have. She could tell that he was thinking the same thing.
Alice seemed to be able to tell, too, because she leaned into Lily from where she was sitting next to her, still catching her breath, and said: “Not your fault.”
Lily closed her eyes, wondering when it was that Alice began to be able to read her.
*
“We're in trouble,” Moody said, to no one in particular, so to everyone, really, as they all stood around in the kitchen, which was the back room and their stronghold, having fortified it with every protective spell they knew, and that's when Lily realised that there were forces that even he couldn't weather, which felt like such a ridiculous shock that she had to turn her eyes from him and the strange clenchedness on his marred face to hide that tears were pressing hotly against her eyes.
Remus looked at her, and said nothing.
*
It felt strange, the way time curved around them in that place. Outside the attacks continued, but the house remained unbreached. And already it seemed like they had been there hours, though the slant of moonlight tumbling unconcernedly through the high kitchen window had barely shifted, though it maybe seemed a bit more reddish now. The presence of someone she didn't know was arresting in his strangeness; she flipped through Amalfa's cooking books, some Muggle, some magical, and tried to read something into the particular kinds of spirits she had stowed away under the stove - a luxury in times like these. She would have been saving them for something, and for a moment Lily tried to imagine what it could be - someone hiding, in flight, running from the terror that shook their world, plotting to return as soon as possible, maybe, to celebrate, to drink this, to return to the steady warmth of Amalfa?
It was a bit like a ritual, the way they took out the bottles, more because of its lack of tradition or gesture than because of any explicit meaning, but sometimes the lack of something is the presence of something, which was something that life, and war, had taught all of them.
Either way, Alice looked at Lily from across the circle of five as they all stared at the assorted bottles between them - and Lily realised that she wasn't looking at the bottles, either, because she caught that look, didn't she, and she caught how frayed at the edges Alice seemed for just a moment, before she smiled and was Alice again.
*
“We're ruining our fighting chances, you know,” Moody said, but he didn't object, and were things really that hopeless then, Lily thought for a moment, watching him as he took a swig of Firewhiskey.
“Courage comes in liquid form sometimes,” Alice said, “if I recall what you said to me once.”
Moody glared at her. “I was talking about Polyjuice Potion.”
Alice shrugged, and Bones smiled a grim smile. “Same difference,” he said, and reached for the bottle as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
No one said the: there's hardly any fighting chances left to ruin.
*
And in that twist of time and a strange, pressured domesticity, Alice and Lily cooked the eggs they'd found in the pantry, and Alice even cut some of the fresh parsley that still stood gleaming a dark green in its small pot - the innocence of a field of grass again, this time not grazing their face, not advancing with an unstoppability that was enough to make anyone cry, anyone who wasn't facing it at least - and scissored it silently over the omelette, bypassing her wand.
“Lily,” Alice said at one point, the small flashes of herb fluttering from her fingers like alternate-reality snowflakes, and there was a small point of heat in the way the name curled around her tongue. “I'm sorry,” she then said, and it was wrong, it was all wrong, and they really weren't supposed to acknowledge that they could die, maybe would this time, so Lily said so, and turned her face so her forehead was touching Alice's cheek.
“There is nowhere else I could be,” she said, surprised by the heat in her gut, and the sharpness of her conviction.
Because, as strange and stilled and timeless and absolutely monstrous as it was, this was more like home than anything she'd felt in a long time.
*
“They could still try to rescue us, you know,” Bones said, sounding unconcerned, though that was probably mostly the alcohol talking.
A look at Amalfa Herbert's Muggle-style clock told Lily that they'd only been there two hours. She reeled a bit from that, because it felt like lifetimes ago that she'd fallen through the door, into a small net of safety, pressurised from all sides, but still there.
“They could,” Moody said gruffly, and then, “but I sincerely hope they're not that stupid.”
And Remus, who hadn't really said anything to Lily at all, said: “I can't help but disagree.” And he looked grim, and young, and stained, and determined, and Lily wondered for a moment when she'd stopped being his friend, because who was she, and she stepped over to him and wrapped her arms around him in a hug that was long overdue.
By the way he first jerked away from her and then carefully melted into her, arm coming around her back awkwardly, she knew that it was something that he might have needed.
She was okay. She was Lily.
*
And then of course they didn't sleep, curled against each other, pressed into the furthest corner of the kitchen as though that would make any difference. Moody and Bones hovered closer to the door, doing nothing much, Moody muttering to himself in a strangely soothing stream of damaged voice.
Remus' shoulder was pressing lightly into hers, his body angled away, and incongruously, impossibly, he did seem to be asleep, or otherwise he'd mastered the art of faking it perfectly, which wouldn't surprise her with friends like James and Sirius. Alice came round the other side, taking Lily's jaw into long fingers and tucking her face into the melt of Alice's shoulder as though it was something they did every day.
Lily allowed it. In fact, she pressed into it, resisting the urge to bring up a hand to press at the play of blood in Alice's neck, just to remind herself what living felt like, exactly. For herself, the hammer of the blood in her head that wasn't due to mortal danger was a sensation that had been so absent for a long while that she had to consciously take a breath and try to get the rhythm of her pulse under control before it beat out of her. They sat for a long while, unmoving. She then thought of Remus and James and Sirius and Peter for a bit, and how... how much more of a personhood they seemed to have than she sometimes did, and she could easily imagine, slipping her eyes shut, how James and Sirius would be breaking down the headquarters right now, in more than just their usual mania, a fear between them that none of them really should have known at their age. Remus shifted against her, as though he could hear her thoughts. It was one reassurance that she was certain he couldn't.
“You're okay,” Alice said, the whisper stirring stray strands of hair on Lily's head.
“Yeah,” Lily offered, uselessly.
“I'm okay,” Alice said.
“Yeah,” Lily breathed, her heart feeling like it was trying to get out of her chest.
And it only took a little tilt of their heads to be kissing - if that's what it was, it was more of a sharing of breath, of mouths pressing together almost motionlessly, passing something desperate and gloriously living between them.
Alice's tongue was gentle and pliant as it came to tease at Lily's lips, questioning. And then it was a kiss, definitely, as Lily couldn't help the hand coming up to grasp at Alice's shirt as she opened her lips, answering the question, because how could the pressure of it ever be expressed in words, really? Alice moulded against her, body a curl of tense relaxation, fingers playing over her cheek as she kissed her languidly, slowly, mapping the different textures in Lily's mouth with an easiness that seemed like it had no right to exist.
And all of the things that would have brought her to pull back, wait, what am I doing and I was going to try not to fall in love with anyone at least for a bit and Remus is right here, all of them didn't matter in the lurch of time they had found themselves in, and the it's Alice knocked all of them out, anyway, because she was Alice, and she was such a warm, tangible, living thing next to Lily, and she was so finely drawn, so uniquely her, with that scent, the small sound she made against Lily that Lily wasn't sure she could handle any of this at all.
When they broke apart, time seemed to resume.
Alice said: “If we die -”
And Lily cut her off: “We won't.” Because all of a sudden she was certain of it. And then, heart hammering, she said: “And this is about life for me.” Because oh, how she'd wanted this, even as she'd tried to erase it under the pressures of their world, and then it felt slightly wrong for a bit that it should have happened like this, at this dangling thread on the unravelling end of life, but sometimes choices made themselves, and there was really nothing to it.
Alice trailed a finger down the line of her jaw, into the small fold of her neck, into the tuck of skin at her collarbones, and then over the barried of her clothes, the swell of her breasts, heaving with breath and want. “For me too,” she sighed, and to Lily the world narrowed down for a bit to Alice's mouth, and her teeth nipping carefully at Lily's lips, and the slight taste of alcohol on her tongue, mixed with something that tasted exactly as she smelled, Alice, sweet and earthy, and hints of smoke of explosions, and parsley, fresh like a green field.
*
“Idiots,” Moody cursed, but then the shouting reached Lily, too, and people banged on their defenses, and they were bangs of life, not death - Moody undid the bonds holding their fort, and James was the first who came toppling through the door, followed by a literally smoking Fabian Prewett, and a blood-streaked Caradoc Dearborn, looking slightly crazy as he grinned at them.
“Well,” James said, starting in the direction of Remus, who was to his feet already, looking astounded, “that was easy.” And then he fainted into Remus, who half-embraced him to hold him up, and the huff of incredulous laughter that forced its way out of him was one of the most extraordinary things Lily had ever heard, second only to the way breath was curling its way out of Alice's mouth as it approached, and attached itself to hers, kiss of life, not kiss of near-death.
*
Getting to them was only part one, obviously. The rescuers had broken through the line that had been sticking to the house, and now they had to use that break, now, now, now - they barely had time to bring James back to before Moody said, his mouth drawn into his lop-sided, manic grin: “All right, you lot, don't get yourselves killed. Fabian, he's upstairs. I secured him. He's all right. Get him down.”
And getting back out was mostly Alice and Lily, attuned to each other, sending Stupefys and Expelliarmuses flying as they went, and Lily had never felt so energised - the remaining Death Eaters scattered, swearing, as the force of Lily's infamous Stunners started slashing them down.
“Why did we come to save you, again?” Dearborn panted, trying to keep up.
Lily sent a flash of red over his shoulder, playing into the sound coming from Alice. “Just using - what you're giving me,” she huffed, breathlessly, honestly, and then twirled around again, body processing the things outside of it in such a way that it surprised itself at moments.
And then it was over, quite suddenly, and they were alone and Gideon Prewett was limping through the door of the house, smiling, supported by his brother, and Moody was pulling at the group, guiding them on. Alice looked at her with eyes that were so wide Lily could see the night reflected in them.
*
“Thank you,” Lily said to James, back at the headquarters.
“Merlin, Evans,” James said, looking a bit drawn, a bit pale, less fidgety than usual, “we can't afford to lose a fighter like you. That was incredible.” Sirius crashed into the room, looking livid, and threw himself at Remus, who let out another one of his incredulous laughs.
“They wouldn't let me, Moony, these fucking wankers - I tore down this place - and this bloke -” he said, and punched James with what didn't seem like a joking strength, “didn't help me, and I swear to Merlin -” And the friends fell into each other with a breathless relief that was tangible, and wild, and Lily turned around to get away from the overpowering extent of their presence; her heart felt like it was being squeezed.
Alice was silently watching her.
“You're okay,” Lily said, and the blending of their languages felt so much like a kiss already she couldn't help the closing of the distance, and the movement into the opening curl of Alice's body, warm, living, home, somehow.
*
And of course it wasn't over that way, but Alice pulled the covers over their heads, and laughed when the dust that that stirred made Lily sneeze, and they were alone in a swell of heat and peace and the words passed between their skins. It was like a small slice of private universe, the way the sheets shut them off from everything else.
“We're one hell of a team,” Alice said, and leaned down and licked unapologetically at the point in Lily's neck where her life strained against the weak surface of her skin.
“Merlin, yes,” she sighed, and pushed upward, into that point of fluttering want, and they were more than okay.