Firsts (Harry Potter)
Title: Firsts
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Lily/Alice
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,850
Notes: Written as part of the femslash10 ficathon for recipient ayii.
Disclaimer: Am not JKR, am not making any money.
Warnings: Some PG-13ey sex, some brief references to torture (drawn from canon).
Summary: There are a few ways of being brave. The Auror exam tests for some of them, not for all.
These were the moments when they were the best: rolling sweat-sticky under a sheltering tree as dusk faded to twilight, Lily’s teeth nipping at Alice’s flesh, Alice’s breath coming in gasps. There was no room for thought out under those trees, no room for anything but the fierceness of Lily as she moved on top of Alice, then inside her, taking up all the available space. They were the only moments when Lily could be truly alone with Alice, and as time went on she grasped after them with increasing ferocity. She wasn't going to lose Alice. She wasn't going to lose Alice.
Of course, inevitably, she did.
____________________
It began the day of the Sorting; it began before they began. Lily Evans, Gryffindor; Alice Prewett, Ravenclaw. It was at the Sorting that Alice noticed the live-ember flare of Lily’s hair and Lily noticed the particular self-possessed tilt of Alice’s head. They smiled shyly at each other across the House banners while the other first-years talked with their tablemates, beginning to forge chains of friendship that would link housemates together for the next seven years. The tables weren’t set up for the students in different Houses to talk to one another, and they didn’t. But Lily’s eyes and Alice’s eyes kept finding one another across the room.
____________________
The first time they laughed together was in Charms class, when Sirius Black made a rather too grandiose sweep of his wand as he worked a levitation charm (watching Roisin Murray out of the corner of his eye, the girls noted) and wound up with the point of his wand up his nose. The first time they spoke was in the hallway after that class, still laughing at Sirius, each feeling a warm flush coursing just under her skin as she realized: I could make a friend here. This could be something special. The first time Lily defied school rules to smuggle Alice into the Gryffindor common room, they sat up eating Chocolate Frogs until one a.m.; the first time Alice smuggled Lily into the Ravenclaw common room, they swiped James Potter’s Invisibility Cloak for the purpose, and then were too intoxicated with their own brilliance to do anything but giggle for the rest of the night.
____________________
The first time they both sneaked out of their dorms after hours to meet in an empty classroom was the first time they realized what privacy could do for them, and all the rest of the firsts followed in a mind-reeling series of electric shocks: the first time they held hands and knew what it meant. The first time Alice threaded her hand through Lily’s hair and then stopped, fingers poised a tenth of an inch away from Lily’s scalp, yearning for and petrified of what would happen next. The first time Lily closed the distance between them. The first time they kissed. The first time they learned how two girls’ bodies could fit together as though they’d been made for one another. The first time that they began to wonder if, maybe, “made for one another” might not be so far off the mark.
The first time Lily came, naked and beautiful in the Astronomy tower just past midnight, lightning corkscrewed through her body and she shouted to the stars. The first time Alice came, half an hour later, she writhed and shook and crushed her fingernails into her palms, joy like terror spilling from her pores as she tried to hold everything in. Her lips moved soundlessly, as if in prayer. Eventually, wet-mouthed, Lily stilled them with a kiss.
____________________
For two whole years they managed it, so sure of one another that it seemed as though they lived in each other’s dreams and breathed one another’s air. No one else seemed to suspect, and Lily wouldn’t have cared in the least if they had. Meanwhile they lived their own lives, their daytime lives as happily mundane as any virgin student’s. Alice became a fair Chaser on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Lily took awards in Potions and Charms. They laughed about that sometimes - Alice the brainy Ravenclaw, charging down boys twice her size on the Quidditch pitch; Lily the brawny Gryffindor, carrying away near-top honors in their class. The Sorting Cap was a joke. Anything that would separate them was a joke. The Astronomy tower rang at nights with the sound of them together.
____________________
In their fifth year they had another first: for the first time in four years, Lily was spending Christmas at the castle instead of at Alice’s house. “They’d like some time alone with me,” Alice said awkwardly, crumpling the edges of the letter from her parents in a little nervous gesture. “The holidays… you know… family stuff…”
“Of course,” Lily said automatically, although she didn’t, really. And soon on that first followed a series of others, questions asked for the first time:
Why did they welcome me for four Christmases and then change their mind?
What sort of holidays am I expected to have, alone at Christmas in the castle?
And if holidays are for family, Alice, then what am I?
What do you expect me to be?
____________________
It began to fall apart.
By the middle of sixth year plenty of students were dating and Lily was getting tired of pretending, tired of fending off come-ons from guys who thought she was available and tired of trying to remember not to hold hands with Alice in public. “This is stupid,” she declared one day in disgust, as Alice shoved her away with such force that she stumbled as a third-year student rounded a corner, almost catching them kissing. “What are you afraid of? What do you think is going to happen?”
“You don’t know,” Alice said, and her hands were playing nervously with her robes. It was a gesture Lily was coming to recognize. “You don’t… you can’t be sure. You know?”
“No,” Lily snapped, “I don’t,” and she spun on her heel. That was the first time she walked away.
____________________
“Please -“ and that was Alice pleading, and the first time that word had ever been used that way, hurt spilling from Alice’s voice and anger blazing from Lily’s eyes. “Please, Lily, you can’t give up on us for this - you can’t -”
“You have gay uncles?” Lily spat, and the words hit Alice like the lash of a whip across her face.
“Why does it matter? You’d like them -“
“Of course I’d like them! Your family knows about them! They’re out, Alice!” Red spots had climbed high into Lily’s cheeks; she hugged her arms around her chest. “You told me you couldn’t be out to your family, you said you’d lose them - all this time I thought -“
“No, Lily, it’s not like that! You have to -- just - I don’t know…” Alice was crying. It didn’t occur to either one of them that Lily should care about that right now. “Just listen…” she began feebly.
“I’m listening.”
Alice opened her mouth, then closed it.
“You told me you couldn’t tell your family, you’ve had me living a lie for years because of them -“
“I can’t tell them!”
“But your uncles -“
“It’s not that, it’s not that, you’re missing the point! It’s -“
She couldn’t say it.
She didn’t need to.
“Oh.” And that was the first time Alice had ever seen revulsion on Lily’s face.
“They’re both wizards, aren’t they? They’re pureblood.”
Alice didn’t answer. Both of them knew anyway.
“You’re pureblood. I’m Muggle-born.” Lily shook her head, once, then looked away. “Well,” she said, and her voice was brittle as shale, “I guess that settles that, then.”
“Lily!”
The second time that Lily walked away counted for more than the first.
____________________
In the final Quidditch match of the season Alice knocked James Potter off his broom, sending him plummeting to the ground. It happened to be the first time he’d broken his nose, come to that; but he had it mended within ten minutes, and it didn’t stop the way that he and Lily looked at one another now. Alice had taken to grinding her teeth at night.
____________________
“I’m telling you this once, Alice. I want to…” Lily’s voice shook.
“You’re going to marry James Potter.” Alice closed her eyes.
“I…” Lily cleared her throat. “I like James. A lot. I could love him.”
“What do you mean, you ‘could’ love him?” Alice asked, opening her eyes warily.
Lily’s green eyes were steady on Alice’s brown. “It’s up to you.”
Second chances. Alice found that her hands were tangled up in her robes, playing with them.
“I’ve been holding out on him,” Lily said, and the tiniest crack ran through her voice. She smoothed it over immediately. “Because of you. So now… it’s time for you to choose.”
Alice looked down at her shoes. The silence stretched out between them, a thinning rubber band.
____________________
Alice married Frank Longbottom the following July, shortly after she turned eighteen. Lily did not attend the wedding. She and James were honeymooning in Scotland.
____________________
Lily Potter was killed within a year and Alice Longbottom was tortured into insanity shortly afterwards. In a way she felt as though it were the conclusion of something that began the day that she heard of Lily’s death: one way or another, the torture was going to render her insane.
____________________
Decades later, Alice is still insane, locked up in St. Mungo’s. News stories and the like are thought to disturb the patients, but one day there is a ripped copy of the Daily Prophet on the floor, tracked in on somebody’s shoe, mud-smeared and tattered. Harry Potter is in the news that day: Harry Potter is always in the news. When Alice sees the newspaper, she lays down the strand of yarn that she has been twining around her finger restlessly and picks up the newspaper.
When Neville comes to see her later that day, he finds her compulsively smoothing and re-smoothing a torn picture showing an irregular portion of Harry Potter’s face. His cheek and most of his mouth are gone, his hair smudged out beneath a layer of grime, but his eyes stare out from the photo, challenging and forthright. Alice is murmuring something to the page; Neville has to step closer to hear. “Sorry,” she whispers, smoothing the paper. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Neville thinks she is sorry because she tore the paper, and brings her a whole copy to show that it’s okay, there are more. When she sees the full photo - the firm chin, the strong mouth, the rumpled mess of black hair - she cries out and covers her face. Neville throws the paper away, then turns to see her hugging the torn photo to her chest. He stares for a moment, then lets it go. He loves his mother, but he’ll never understand her.
____________________
The torn photo lives under Alice’s pillow from that day on. In her dreams the face is whole. In her dreams she has a third chance. In her dreams she makes a different choice.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Lily/Alice
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,850
Notes: Written as part of the femslash10 ficathon for recipient ayii.
Disclaimer: Am not JKR, am not making any money.
Warnings: Some PG-13ey sex, some brief references to torture (drawn from canon).
Summary: There are a few ways of being brave. The Auror exam tests for some of them, not for all.
These were the moments when they were the best: rolling sweat-sticky under a sheltering tree as dusk faded to twilight, Lily’s teeth nipping at Alice’s flesh, Alice’s breath coming in gasps. There was no room for thought out under those trees, no room for anything but the fierceness of Lily as she moved on top of Alice, then inside her, taking up all the available space. They were the only moments when Lily could be truly alone with Alice, and as time went on she grasped after them with increasing ferocity. She wasn't going to lose Alice. She wasn't going to lose Alice.
Of course, inevitably, she did.
____________________
It began the day of the Sorting; it began before they began. Lily Evans, Gryffindor; Alice Prewett, Ravenclaw. It was at the Sorting that Alice noticed the live-ember flare of Lily’s hair and Lily noticed the particular self-possessed tilt of Alice’s head. They smiled shyly at each other across the House banners while the other first-years talked with their tablemates, beginning to forge chains of friendship that would link housemates together for the next seven years. The tables weren’t set up for the students in different Houses to talk to one another, and they didn’t. But Lily’s eyes and Alice’s eyes kept finding one another across the room.
____________________
The first time they laughed together was in Charms class, when Sirius Black made a rather too grandiose sweep of his wand as he worked a levitation charm (watching Roisin Murray out of the corner of his eye, the girls noted) and wound up with the point of his wand up his nose. The first time they spoke was in the hallway after that class, still laughing at Sirius, each feeling a warm flush coursing just under her skin as she realized: I could make a friend here. This could be something special. The first time Lily defied school rules to smuggle Alice into the Gryffindor common room, they sat up eating Chocolate Frogs until one a.m.; the first time Alice smuggled Lily into the Ravenclaw common room, they swiped James Potter’s Invisibility Cloak for the purpose, and then were too intoxicated with their own brilliance to do anything but giggle for the rest of the night.
____________________
The first time they both sneaked out of their dorms after hours to meet in an empty classroom was the first time they realized what privacy could do for them, and all the rest of the firsts followed in a mind-reeling series of electric shocks: the first time they held hands and knew what it meant. The first time Alice threaded her hand through Lily’s hair and then stopped, fingers poised a tenth of an inch away from Lily’s scalp, yearning for and petrified of what would happen next. The first time Lily closed the distance between them. The first time they kissed. The first time they learned how two girls’ bodies could fit together as though they’d been made for one another. The first time that they began to wonder if, maybe, “made for one another” might not be so far off the mark.
The first time Lily came, naked and beautiful in the Astronomy tower just past midnight, lightning corkscrewed through her body and she shouted to the stars. The first time Alice came, half an hour later, she writhed and shook and crushed her fingernails into her palms, joy like terror spilling from her pores as she tried to hold everything in. Her lips moved soundlessly, as if in prayer. Eventually, wet-mouthed, Lily stilled them with a kiss.
____________________
For two whole years they managed it, so sure of one another that it seemed as though they lived in each other’s dreams and breathed one another’s air. No one else seemed to suspect, and Lily wouldn’t have cared in the least if they had. Meanwhile they lived their own lives, their daytime lives as happily mundane as any virgin student’s. Alice became a fair Chaser on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Lily took awards in Potions and Charms. They laughed about that sometimes - Alice the brainy Ravenclaw, charging down boys twice her size on the Quidditch pitch; Lily the brawny Gryffindor, carrying away near-top honors in their class. The Sorting Cap was a joke. Anything that would separate them was a joke. The Astronomy tower rang at nights with the sound of them together.
____________________
In their fifth year they had another first: for the first time in four years, Lily was spending Christmas at the castle instead of at Alice’s house. “They’d like some time alone with me,” Alice said awkwardly, crumpling the edges of the letter from her parents in a little nervous gesture. “The holidays… you know… family stuff…”
“Of course,” Lily said automatically, although she didn’t, really. And soon on that first followed a series of others, questions asked for the first time:
Why did they welcome me for four Christmases and then change their mind?
What sort of holidays am I expected to have, alone at Christmas in the castle?
And if holidays are for family, Alice, then what am I?
What do you expect me to be?
____________________
It began to fall apart.
By the middle of sixth year plenty of students were dating and Lily was getting tired of pretending, tired of fending off come-ons from guys who thought she was available and tired of trying to remember not to hold hands with Alice in public. “This is stupid,” she declared one day in disgust, as Alice shoved her away with such force that she stumbled as a third-year student rounded a corner, almost catching them kissing. “What are you afraid of? What do you think is going to happen?”
“You don’t know,” Alice said, and her hands were playing nervously with her robes. It was a gesture Lily was coming to recognize. “You don’t… you can’t be sure. You know?”
“No,” Lily snapped, “I don’t,” and she spun on her heel. That was the first time she walked away.
____________________
“Please -“ and that was Alice pleading, and the first time that word had ever been used that way, hurt spilling from Alice’s voice and anger blazing from Lily’s eyes. “Please, Lily, you can’t give up on us for this - you can’t -”
“You have gay uncles?” Lily spat, and the words hit Alice like the lash of a whip across her face.
“Why does it matter? You’d like them -“
“Of course I’d like them! Your family knows about them! They’re out, Alice!” Red spots had climbed high into Lily’s cheeks; she hugged her arms around her chest. “You told me you couldn’t be out to your family, you said you’d lose them - all this time I thought -“
“No, Lily, it’s not like that! You have to -- just - I don’t know…” Alice was crying. It didn’t occur to either one of them that Lily should care about that right now. “Just listen…” she began feebly.
“I’m listening.”
Alice opened her mouth, then closed it.
“You told me you couldn’t tell your family, you’ve had me living a lie for years because of them -“
“I can’t tell them!”
“But your uncles -“
“It’s not that, it’s not that, you’re missing the point! It’s -“
She couldn’t say it.
She didn’t need to.
“Oh.” And that was the first time Alice had ever seen revulsion on Lily’s face.
“They’re both wizards, aren’t they? They’re pureblood.”
Alice didn’t answer. Both of them knew anyway.
“You’re pureblood. I’m Muggle-born.” Lily shook her head, once, then looked away. “Well,” she said, and her voice was brittle as shale, “I guess that settles that, then.”
“Lily!”
The second time that Lily walked away counted for more than the first.
____________________
In the final Quidditch match of the season Alice knocked James Potter off his broom, sending him plummeting to the ground. It happened to be the first time he’d broken his nose, come to that; but he had it mended within ten minutes, and it didn’t stop the way that he and Lily looked at one another now. Alice had taken to grinding her teeth at night.
____________________
“I’m telling you this once, Alice. I want to…” Lily’s voice shook.
“You’re going to marry James Potter.” Alice closed her eyes.
“I…” Lily cleared her throat. “I like James. A lot. I could love him.”
“What do you mean, you ‘could’ love him?” Alice asked, opening her eyes warily.
Lily’s green eyes were steady on Alice’s brown. “It’s up to you.”
Second chances. Alice found that her hands were tangled up in her robes, playing with them.
“I’ve been holding out on him,” Lily said, and the tiniest crack ran through her voice. She smoothed it over immediately. “Because of you. So now… it’s time for you to choose.”
Alice looked down at her shoes. The silence stretched out between them, a thinning rubber band.
____________________
Alice married Frank Longbottom the following July, shortly after she turned eighteen. Lily did not attend the wedding. She and James were honeymooning in Scotland.
____________________
Lily Potter was killed within a year and Alice Longbottom was tortured into insanity shortly afterwards. In a way she felt as though it were the conclusion of something that began the day that she heard of Lily’s death: one way or another, the torture was going to render her insane.
____________________
Decades later, Alice is still insane, locked up in St. Mungo’s. News stories and the like are thought to disturb the patients, but one day there is a ripped copy of the Daily Prophet on the floor, tracked in on somebody’s shoe, mud-smeared and tattered. Harry Potter is in the news that day: Harry Potter is always in the news. When Alice sees the newspaper, she lays down the strand of yarn that she has been twining around her finger restlessly and picks up the newspaper.
When Neville comes to see her later that day, he finds her compulsively smoothing and re-smoothing a torn picture showing an irregular portion of Harry Potter’s face. His cheek and most of his mouth are gone, his hair smudged out beneath a layer of grime, but his eyes stare out from the photo, challenging and forthright. Alice is murmuring something to the page; Neville has to step closer to hear. “Sorry,” she whispers, smoothing the paper. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Neville thinks she is sorry because she tore the paper, and brings her a whole copy to show that it’s okay, there are more. When she sees the full photo - the firm chin, the strong mouth, the rumpled mess of black hair - she cries out and covers her face. Neville throws the paper away, then turns to see her hugging the torn photo to her chest. He stares for a moment, then lets it go. He loves his mother, but he’ll never understand her.
____________________
The torn photo lives under Alice’s pillow from that day on. In her dreams the face is whole. In her dreams she has a third chance. In her dreams she makes a different choice.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.