Follow Your Inner Moonlight (Chapter Eight 2/2)
Title: Follow Your Inner Moonlight
Author: spin_deep
Character/Pairing: Lily Luna Potter/Teddy Lupin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: about 12,400 (in all of Chapter 8)
Summary: "Follow your inner moonlight, don't hide the madness." - Allen Ginsberg
She flicked at the ash that clung to her sleeves and raised her gray eyes to meet his with an expression that looked an awful lot like derision. This girl was not wild, and her presence in his home was all the more terrifying because of it. In his line of work, Teddy had gotten used to the unexpected. But he did not like it.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: I love knowing what people think of my writing, so please feel free to comment!
The next Sunday Lily was sitting on a rock in her family’s backyard. She and Hugo used to play king of the mountain on it when they were little. Hugo and Ris had used it as a meeting point, when they’d gotten older and both went to family parties at the Potters’. Lily had seen Scorpius and Albus meet there, too, but Lily had always gone to it because it was isolated - blocked by trees from the house and surrounded by small hills. That night it had also been covered in two inches of snow, but Lily had cleared that and cast a warming charm on the rock and it was comfortable enough.
She had been sitting there for several minutes before her parents arrived. They had mostly been moving around each other silently since she’d come home, Lily working on homework alone in her bedroom or alone on the living room floor, but she was leaving the next day and they hated leaving things unresolved.
“Are you nervous about going back?” Ginny asked, sitting down beside Lily and placing a hand on her back. Harry stood beside them, his hand on Ginny’s shoulder.
“I’ve dealt with this sort of thing before,” Lily said. “I guess…” She sighed. “I’m only scared because Ris and Hugo were upset with me. They’ve never gotten angry at me before.”
“Did you write them at all?” Harry asked. Lily shook her head.
“I didn’t know what to say. And it’ll mean more if I apologize in person, I hope.”
“They’ll forgive you,” Ginny assured her. “They’ll understand, better than anyone else.”
Lily stayed silent. She had never kept secrets from them before, and she had no idea how they would react to it. Not well, apparently. Not well at all.
“I know that when we first found out - everything - that we acted like we were disappointed in you.” Harry’s voice was soft in the cold night air and Lily bit her lip. She hoped that he wouldn’t tell her that he hadn’t been, because she had never wanted her parents to lie to protect her emotions.
“And we were,” Harry continued. “Then, we were very disappointed that you hadn’t told us about Teddy or Nott. But we’ve discussed it, Lily, and while we are still hurt, we’re starting to understand.”
Lily tensed. If her parents would stop looking at her like she had let them down, then she might be able to stop feeling guilty about things she had promised she’d never feel guilty about.
Ginny said, “We know that, despite our best efforts, you have not had the easiest life. It is not easy being in the spotlight, and it’s especially difficult for you because you are so different. And your differences make you who you are and your father and I love you for your differences. I cannot imagine you as similar to Albus or James or Rose - you have always been your own person, Lily, and that person is a wonderful one. We are sorry if the world has ever made you doubt that, but we are even sorrier if we have ever made you doubt it.”
“You’ve never,” Lily began, but Harry interrupted.
“I’m sure that we have, though. You don’t need to lie to us. You don’t need to lie at all, and I’m also sorry that we’ve made you feel like you do. This is what we want to say: We love you, and we are proud of you and the decisions you’ve made. We’re proud of how you’ve grown up. We’re impressed with how loyal you have been to your friends.”
“Please, Lily, just know that we love you.”
“I love you guys, too.”
She didn’t really feel like pulling away when they hugged her. That was progress.
She also wished that she could stay home when she stood by the fireplace in their living room the next morning. She hadn’t dreaded going to school this much, ever. Aside from the awkward silence between her and her parents, though, her home had been peaceful. It had been isolated. And now Lily had to go back and face the consequences of her actions over the last several months and she really wished that she could have just left that world, where gossip ran wild, and gone somewhere where her name and her face were completely unknown.
This was not the first time she had wished that, and it would certainly not be the last, so she inhaled a final breath of peaceful air and tossed her handful of Floo powder into the flames. She whirled into McGonagall’s office.
The headmistress barely looked up from the papers she was reading. “Good morning, Miss Potter.”
“Hi, Professor.” Lily hesitated by the fireplace. “Do you need me to…do anything?”
“Oh, no. You’re fine. You can go straight to your dormitory, or class if you have it this morning.”
“Thank you.” She left the room and went down the staircase. She actually did have class that morning, but she wasn’t planning on going to it. Hugo and Ris both had Herbology, and she needed to find them.
She left the castle and hurried down the front steps. Groups of seventh and six years were milling toward the greenhouses, and Lily could feel their eyes on her as she passed them. She could imagine what they were saying and thinking, but she didn’t stop to listen. She kept her attention focused on the girl with lime green hair and the curly-haired ginger ahead of her.
When she caught up to them she could not think of anything more to say than, “Hey, guys.”
Ris didn’t even look at her. Hugo glanced over and his blue eyes were not forgiving.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
They kept walking. Lily waited a fraction of a second before following them. “Please,” she said.
They had reached the greenhouse. Hugo held the door open for Ris and let it fall shut behind him; Lily reached for it and tugged it open again. They were standing at a table toward the back of the mostly full glass-enclosed room. Lily could feel everyone’s eyes on her as she approached, but Ris and Hugo managed to keep their attention on the plant waving spiny arms on the table in front of them.
Lily stood beside Hugo. He shifted a barely perceptible inch away from her. The whole classroom had fallen silent, watching the three friends as if waiting for an explosion. None came before Professor Longbottom entered the room. He began lecturing without taking too much notice of the students, but when he finally glanced up his eyes found Lily’s immediately.
He sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Miss Potter,” he sounded almost apologetic, “I believe you’re in the wrong class.”
“Yes, sir.” But Lily didn’t move.
“Are you planning on standing there the whole class?”
“Yes, sir.”
She heard some muttering from somewhere in the group - maybe from that ratty Ravenclaw Smith, or the Hufflepuff at the front whose name she never could remember. Longbottom spared a glare for the class in general before turning his attention back to Lily.
“Don’t you have a class that you’re supposed to be in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lily,” he sighed, and she could see some of her family’s friend in the lines around his eyes, “go to your class please.” He was begging her not to make this more difficult on herself but Merlin, she just needed to sort out this mess with Ris and Hugo. She did not give a damn what everyone else said about her, but she needed her friends.
“Lily,” Hugo muttered, “go away.”
Ris elbowed him. They shouldn’t have decided on the silent treatment. Hugo sucked at silent treatment, but it was worrying how long he’d lasted.
Lily shook her head. “I won’t say anything, Professor. I swear. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Longbottom sighed and turned back to demonstrating what his students were supposed to be doing to the plants with the waving tentacles. Lily stepped out of the way. She’d never been good at Herbology.
When the class was over she began to follow Hugo and Ris out of the greenhouse, but Longbottom called her to the front. He waited until everyone had left the room to speak, although Lily noticed quite a few people lingering outside the door, probably with hearing-enhancing charms cast and their rumor-spreading tongues already wagging.
“Are you all right, Lily?” Professor Longbottom asked.
She glanced at the door before saying, “I’ll be fine once Hugo and Ris have yelled at me. This silence is disconcerting, don’t you think?” She smiled at him, ever the (false) positive one.
He shook his head. “You need to be more careful, Lily. If you want people to forget about it, you need to stop drawing attention to yourself.”
Lily raised her eyes to his. “I don’t care whether people forget about ‘it’ or not. I don’t care what people say. Can I go?” Ris and Hugo might have managed to make it back to the school by then, and they’d have easily lost her among the castle’s many corridors and corners.
“Yes. Yes, you can go.” Lily had already pushed through the group at the door by the time Professor Longbottom had finished.
Ris and Hugo hadn’t quite made it to the castle. Lily reached them before they mounted the front steps, and they both stopped walking.
“Lily,” Hugo sighed. “Just leave it alone, yeah?”
“No.” Lily was out of breath from running across the grounds and the word came out like a gasp. “No, I won’t.”
Ris was the queen of silent treatment. Lily didn’t expect her to talk; she was hoping to work on Hugo. But Ris’s eyes were suddenly locked on Lily’s own. “Look, you need to stop. Stop following us and trying to talk to us because we are not over it. And I honestly cannot see myself ever getting over it because Merlin, Lily, you lied to us. We don’t lie to each other.”
Lily could have said many things at that. She could have used the ever-relevant,we’re Slytherins. We lie to everyone. Or she could have reminded her best friend of the many lies she’d told Lily back in the beginning. But she just said, “I am so sorry.”
“Are you really?” Ris snorted. “I bet, if you could go back, you’d tell all those lies again.”
“Not to you. To you, I’d tell the truth. If I could do it again, I’d tell you the moment it started.”
“Bullshit,” Hugo said. “That’s bullshit, Potter. You’ve always been so fucking reserved - even with us. You never tell us anything.”
“Don’t try to deny it,” Ris added, “We were talking about it, and we realized that you’ve barely talked about anything other than PWP and our lives - Hugo and mine - in ages. Much longer than a year.”
This was that same goddamn fight she’d had with Teddy back at the beginning of the summer all over again. She could use the same solution - offer transparency for forgiveness. “My life is not interesting,” Lily told them. “You know that.”
“We’re interested,” Hugo said. “We’ve always been.”
“Fine. What do you want to know?” A crowd had gathered around them, and the students had stopped breathing at that. She was about to spill secrets to the school. But that only mattered for the next three months. Three months was not a long time.
“Why didn’t you tell us about Teddy?” Ris shot immediately.
“Because I didn’t want you to judge me.” Lily had rehearsed the answer to that question too many times.
“How could you think that we would?” Hugo asked.
“Because we judge everyone else,” Lily could feel sudden, shameful tears in her eyes. “It seemed safer as a secret.”
Ris looked at her for a long moment. She looked at the crowd of students around them, all fascinated by the fight, all horribly obvious about their eavesdropping, all bitter about some imagined or real slight Lily or Ris or Hugo had done them in the past. Ris shook her head and crossed the space to link her arm with Lily’s. “This is not over,” she told her. “But for now, I forgive you.”
Hugo took a minute longer but he came to Lily’s other side eventually, and the three of them went up to the castle together, leaving a very disappointed group of students behind them.
[x]
Things didn’t go back to normal, but they were as close to normal as Lily could have hoped for, and she was grateful for that. Hugo and Ris made her talk to them more, but that wasn’t a bad thing. She had forgotten how lucky she was to have them as her friends.
Every morning when the owls flew into the Great Hall, Lily looked up, holding onto the stupid hope that Teddy would have said, “Fuck it” to her father’s restriction (even though she was too scared to). Every morning she was disappointed.
One morning in early March an owl did land at her spot. He was unfamiliar, but the writing on the envelope he held wasn’t. She had last seen it on a howler, but this letter seemed unaltered by any spells.
She opened the envelope and pulled out the letter after offering Sebastian’s new owl a piece of bacon.
Potter -
Ted just told me what my dad did to you. I had no idea and I am so sorry. I wish that I could have stopped him. He is such a fucking bastard.
Thank you for keeping my secret even though I probably didn’t deserve it.
Sorry about the howler.
Ted says that you’ve got some problems with your family and he’s been working his ass off more than usual lately so I know that things aren’t perfect right now for either of you but I hope they get better. I hope you can come back this summer.
- Nott
She folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket. She felt homesick in a way she hadn’t since the beginning of the school year and when Ris looked at her with questions in her eyes Lily shrugged. “I’m just missing Greece.”
They understood.
[x]
Harry typically received a pile of letters in his box at the office around eleven every morning, and then sometimes he spent his lunch break reading them, delegating the less urgent ones to other people in the department, occasionally binning them without responding, and every so often answering them himself. He often allowed the letters to pile up for days, supposing that nothing too important would arrive via owl.
But after the full moon in March he began paying much closer attention to all forms of correspondence. Whenever he walked down corridors or stood in the lift and saw fluttering memos passing, he tried to decipher the department title on the parchment. If the memo was flitting from or to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures he’d sometimes snatch them out of the air and unfold them, reading them quickly before setting them free again. Nobody questioned him about it - he was Harry Potter, after all, and the glares that he sent after the freed memos made even those who knew him hesitant to speak to him.
He sorted through his post the instant his secretary deposited it in his box, his hands flipping between the papers as he searched for familiar handwriting on the envelopes. Finally, one day near the middle of the month he pulled a letter from the pile and recognized the handwriting on the front from his godson’s few letters over the past several years. He opened the envelope with shaking hands, hoping that Teddy had somehow managed to convince the Ministry officials that he deserved continued funding. There were two pages.
Dear Harry,
The experiment is still on! I managed to work some sort of miracle with the potions and the board thought it was impressive enough to continue funding the experiment, despite my “questionable personal choices”. I’ve included the details on the next sheet, which I’ve written as a letter to Lily. If you find it appropriate, will you please send it to her? She was very involved in the potions process this summer, and I want her to know how it’s working out.
Thank you,
Teddy
[x]
Lily still watched the owls entering the Great Hall well into March, even though she knew that she shouldn’t have expected anything from Teddy, or anything more from Nott. Her connections to the world outside of Hogwarts had been steadily shrinking since August, but she couldn’t help her eyes drifting up to search for familiar feathers among the owls every morning. Even so, she was surprised to see her father’s owl there one day in mid-March. She opened the envelope immediately, pulling out two sheets of parchment.
The first page was a rushed message from her father.
Hi, Lily,
I just got a note from Teddy and he asked me to send this to you. I’ve read it and it’s very exciting news.
I’ve already let him know that I’ve sent it to you, so you don’t need to worry about responding. However, he did mention that you’d been involved in the potions making this summer - you’ve never mentioned you like potions - what’s that about?
Look forward to hearing from you.
Love,
Dad
She dropped the first sheet on her empty breakfast plate and began reading the letter from Teddy.
Dear Lily,
I don’t think that your father would have told you that the experiment was put under surveillance last month - the department wanted to ensure that I wasn’t wasting money. It was terrifying beforehand, of course. I brewed the potions with no idea of whether they’d be any more effective than of the others we’ve tried, but I knew that if they weren’t any better these would be the last batches I ever brewed.
The woman from the Ministry arrived just before the full moon, so I gave her a tour of the house and everything and then she watched the whole procedure. It made me pretty pissed, actually, because she was so clinical about the whole thing and Josef and Ana and Tomas were in pain and the Ministry employee was just asking such bastardly questions.
The first night nothing happened. The werewolves transformed like always, although I think it was slightly less painful than usual. Remember the first full moon you were here for, when the pain was so bad that their howls hurt to hear? That hasn’t happened since this summer, which I’ve been happy about, but the Ministry employees didn’t really seem to give a damn.
They were really disdainful about the whole thing. It made me nervous, but it also made me angry, because at least I’m trying something. No one else is even willing to do that.
But that all changed the next night, when I gave Josef, Ana, and Tomas the potions and they transformed like always, except that when they transformed none of them had tails. They were tailless wolves and Merlin, Lil, I’ve never been so happy in my life.
Luckily the Ministry official realized that this was a big deal. so the experiment is continuing!
About your last letter, I forgive you, of course. But Merlin, Lil, why didn’t you tell one of us? I wish you’d told me or your parents or even Albus. We could have helped. But I’m sure you’ve heard that from your parents already, so I’ll let it be.
I will see you in June.
Love,
Teddy
He was curing lycanthropy and he would see her in June. She couldn’t stop smiling for days.
[x]
Lily had thought that celebrating the end of seven years’ education would have been climactic. She would have expected noisy explosions of sparklers in the night sky and bonfires of burnt textbooks (Bathilda Bagshot and Cassandra Vablatsky prominent among them) and long, teary speeches from each of the professors about how much they would miss each individual student. Lily’s expectations, she found, were incorrect. Professor McGonagall announced the names of all of the seventh years at the final feast and the school applauded them after McGonagall read off “Zabini, Mada.”
Slytherin house threw its own leaving party, of course, but Lily, Ris, and Hugo decided not to join. They slipped outside after the feast, Lily carrying a bottle of Firewhiskey beneath her robes, and went to sit by the Lake.
Lily had always liked the way the grounds looked at night. They were empty and dark, with obscured shapes of trees and buildings jutting at odd angles from the sloping hills. To others it might have seemed menacing and dangerous; to Lily, Ris, and Hugo it was an image of home.
“So.” Ris took the bottle from Lily and untwisted the cap, tilting it back into her mouth. Hugo took it from her.
“So,” Lily repeated.
“This is it.” Lily had always thought that if any of them cried when they left school, it would have been Hugo. She had never told him this, of course, and his voice sounded steady enough, so she guessed she had been wrong.
“We’re really leaving,” Ris said. “Merlin, I never really thought this would happen to us.”
“What?” Lily laughed, “You thought time was going to stop before we left school?”
“I thought that we would magically sort out a way to stop time before we left school,” Ris corrected. “But I guess that we grew out of it sooner than I thought we would.” She had the bottle again and she held it up to her eye, looking at the slowly lapping Lake through the glass and alcohol. “Whenever I thought about our last night here, I thought we’d be frantically selling our last stocks of Touch Explosion and trying to make every single second count.”
“I never thought we’d be ready to go,” Hugo confessed. “But this year didn’t really turn out the way I expected it to.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I think a lot of that was probably my fault. I know I kind of…abandoned you guys for a while there.”
“It’s all right, Lil,” Hugo said. “We get it now.”
“And it’s probably better this way.” Ris tipped the bottle into her mouth and collected the last few drops of Firewhiskey on her tongue. “I’d rather be ready to leave than want to be a child forever.”
“And now we can all go off and be adults, or something like them.”
Lily grinned. “Maybe. Or maybe we can just be us, with big boy and big girl jobs.”
“If we manage to get jobs,” Hugo muttered. “Ris and I are still fucked in that department.”
“You’re really going to Greece?” Ris asked, tossing the bottle into the Lake and leaning her head against Lily’s shoulder.
“If I pass the exam and get offered the position, yeah.”
“We’ll miss you.” Hugo tugged at her braid and she shrugged, bumping Ris’s head against her ear.
“You can just Floo me.”
“Nice,” Ris muttered.
“But of course I’ll miss you, too.” Lily elbowed her and Ris shoved her back.
“I don’t like goodbyes,” she said.
“Then we won’t say them,” Lily promised. “Besides, we’ll all be back here again. No one ever leaves Hogwarts for good. And we have the whole summer before I leave for Greece. If I even get the job.”
“You’ll get it,” Ris told her. “You’re Lily Potter. The world can only fuck you over so much before things start going your way.”
“I like that theory.” Lily stood and the world swam around her. “Shall we?”
“Let’s.”
They were the only people moving in the dark grounds, and Lily said silent goodbyes, because these moments were the last ones she’d spend with such an intimate, possessive knowledge of Hogwarts.
[x]
When Lily had sent her parents a letter explaining that she had signed up to take the Potion’s Master’s Examination and that she wanted to apply for a job as Teddy’s assistant they had exchanged a look and Ginny had written Lily seven different letters before she ended up sending one.
It read:
Dear Lily,
Your dad and I are happy that you’re starting to make plans for your life after Hogwarts (you’re certainly beating James in that regard!), but we’re concerned that you haven’t put much thought into this.
We understand that you were interested in Teddy’s experiments over the summer, but we’re worried that you are making this decision based on a relationship which has not had the opportunity to grow (and we will not hide that we are still worried about the age difference). If you have decided to apply for this job because of Teddy, please consider how you would feel about it if you felt no emotional attachment - or even a negative emotional attachment - to him, and then decide whether or not this is the ideal position for you.
We love you.
Mum and Dad
Lily hadn’t been as angry when she received that letter as she would have been a few months before. She pulled out her own parchment and quill immediately and sent her parents a calming note in response.
Dear Mum and Dad:
I understand where you’re coming from, but after having spent the summer with Ana and Josef and Tomas and Sebastian I cannot imagine any other place for myself. My decision has very little to do with Teddy. I want to help my friends, and I feel as if Teddy’s experiment provides the best opportunity.
Love,
Lily
They exchanged another look when they received that note, but they didn’t express their doubts to their daughter. After all, Lily had always had a big, if slightly frosty, heart. And besides, Harry and Ginny were not at all sure what the chances of Lily passing the Potions Masters Exam were. She had done well enough on her NEWTS, they thought, but, well, it had always been difficult to tell with her.
[x]
Lily passed, of course. She received her results in mid-July and she sent her application in to the Department for the Protection and Control of Magical Creatures the next day. She wrote Teddy a letter and sent Ris and Hugo and Al and Score and James messages and left the results on her kitchen table so her parents would see them. Then she went out to her backyard and sat on her rock until the sun turned the leaves gold.
Ris and Hugo found her there. “Are you leaving for real, then?” Ris asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Lily, you got perfect scores. You’ll get the job,” Hugo pushed her and she moved over so they could both sit on the rock with her.
She took their hands in hers and said, “Yeah, I guess I’m leaving.”
“You’re happy, aren’t you?” Ris said. “You had goddamn better be happy, Lily Luna, because if you’re making me feel this sad and you’re not happy I will seriously kill you.”
“If you’re not happy, you should call this whole thing off and we can start brewing illegal potions again because that’s what we’re all really good at.”
“I’m happy,” Lily told them. “But I’m sorry you’re sad. I promise I’ll come visit and you’ll come visit. I want you to meet everyone and properly meet Teddy and I want you to see…everything.”
“God, we’re so old.” Ris kicked her heel against the rock. “When did that happen?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think I mind.”
“Yeah, well you wouldn’t.” Hugo sighed. “You were always the oldest out of all of us, Lil.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you’re mature.” Ris tugged her hand from Lily’s and slid down from the rock. Hugo followed her, and they stood facing Lily. Ris was smiling, but her eyes were bright. “Here.” She held out a familiar bottle and Lily took it after a moment.
“Touch Explosion?” Lily asked.
“We saved the last bottle for you,” Ris explained. “Since you’ve finally got someone to use it with.”
Lily laughed. “How thoughtful of you.”
“We are the best.” Hugo grinned. “We’ll see you, Lil.”
“Yeah, see you.”
They disapparated and she tilted the bottle, watching as the potion swirled against the glass. Merlin, there was such a history there. She slipped the potion into her pocket and sat outside for a while longer, before going inside and listening to her parents’ congratulations. It was all sort of a blur; she just wanted her job offer to arrive. She just wanted to be there, already.
Two weeks after she received her test results, two letters arrived for Lily in the post. The first was addressed in fancy script on thick parchment, and she slit the Ministry seal to find that she had been accepted as “Potions Master II” on the “Lycanthropy Program” in Greece. She would begin the third week of August.
The second was from Teddy. He had only written: I can’t wait. He hadn’t needed to write anything else.
When she sprinkled Floo Powder on her fire and dragged her trunk into the flames, she didn’t feel sad. This time she knew that when the fire released her she would be home.
Epilogue
Author: spin_deep
Character/Pairing: Lily Luna Potter/Teddy Lupin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: about 12,400 (in all of Chapter 8)
Summary: "Follow your inner moonlight, don't hide the madness." - Allen Ginsberg
She flicked at the ash that clung to her sleeves and raised her gray eyes to meet his with an expression that looked an awful lot like derision. This girl was not wild, and her presence in his home was all the more terrifying because of it. In his line of work, Teddy had gotten used to the unexpected. But he did not like it.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: I love knowing what people think of my writing, so please feel free to comment!
The next Sunday Lily was sitting on a rock in her family’s backyard. She and Hugo used to play king of the mountain on it when they were little. Hugo and Ris had used it as a meeting point, when they’d gotten older and both went to family parties at the Potters’. Lily had seen Scorpius and Albus meet there, too, but Lily had always gone to it because it was isolated - blocked by trees from the house and surrounded by small hills. That night it had also been covered in two inches of snow, but Lily had cleared that and cast a warming charm on the rock and it was comfortable enough.
She had been sitting there for several minutes before her parents arrived. They had mostly been moving around each other silently since she’d come home, Lily working on homework alone in her bedroom or alone on the living room floor, but she was leaving the next day and they hated leaving things unresolved.
“Are you nervous about going back?” Ginny asked, sitting down beside Lily and placing a hand on her back. Harry stood beside them, his hand on Ginny’s shoulder.
“I’ve dealt with this sort of thing before,” Lily said. “I guess…” She sighed. “I’m only scared because Ris and Hugo were upset with me. They’ve never gotten angry at me before.”
“Did you write them at all?” Harry asked. Lily shook her head.
“I didn’t know what to say. And it’ll mean more if I apologize in person, I hope.”
“They’ll forgive you,” Ginny assured her. “They’ll understand, better than anyone else.”
Lily stayed silent. She had never kept secrets from them before, and she had no idea how they would react to it. Not well, apparently. Not well at all.
“I know that when we first found out - everything - that we acted like we were disappointed in you.” Harry’s voice was soft in the cold night air and Lily bit her lip. She hoped that he wouldn’t tell her that he hadn’t been, because she had never wanted her parents to lie to protect her emotions.
“And we were,” Harry continued. “Then, we were very disappointed that you hadn’t told us about Teddy or Nott. But we’ve discussed it, Lily, and while we are still hurt, we’re starting to understand.”
Lily tensed. If her parents would stop looking at her like she had let them down, then she might be able to stop feeling guilty about things she had promised she’d never feel guilty about.
Ginny said, “We know that, despite our best efforts, you have not had the easiest life. It is not easy being in the spotlight, and it’s especially difficult for you because you are so different. And your differences make you who you are and your father and I love you for your differences. I cannot imagine you as similar to Albus or James or Rose - you have always been your own person, Lily, and that person is a wonderful one. We are sorry if the world has ever made you doubt that, but we are even sorrier if we have ever made you doubt it.”
“You’ve never,” Lily began, but Harry interrupted.
“I’m sure that we have, though. You don’t need to lie to us. You don’t need to lie at all, and I’m also sorry that we’ve made you feel like you do. This is what we want to say: We love you, and we are proud of you and the decisions you’ve made. We’re proud of how you’ve grown up. We’re impressed with how loyal you have been to your friends.”
“Please, Lily, just know that we love you.”
“I love you guys, too.”
She didn’t really feel like pulling away when they hugged her. That was progress.
She also wished that she could stay home when she stood by the fireplace in their living room the next morning. She hadn’t dreaded going to school this much, ever. Aside from the awkward silence between her and her parents, though, her home had been peaceful. It had been isolated. And now Lily had to go back and face the consequences of her actions over the last several months and she really wished that she could have just left that world, where gossip ran wild, and gone somewhere where her name and her face were completely unknown.
This was not the first time she had wished that, and it would certainly not be the last, so she inhaled a final breath of peaceful air and tossed her handful of Floo powder into the flames. She whirled into McGonagall’s office.
The headmistress barely looked up from the papers she was reading. “Good morning, Miss Potter.”
“Hi, Professor.” Lily hesitated by the fireplace. “Do you need me to…do anything?”
“Oh, no. You’re fine. You can go straight to your dormitory, or class if you have it this morning.”
“Thank you.” She left the room and went down the staircase. She actually did have class that morning, but she wasn’t planning on going to it. Hugo and Ris both had Herbology, and she needed to find them.
She left the castle and hurried down the front steps. Groups of seventh and six years were milling toward the greenhouses, and Lily could feel their eyes on her as she passed them. She could imagine what they were saying and thinking, but she didn’t stop to listen. She kept her attention focused on the girl with lime green hair and the curly-haired ginger ahead of her.
When she caught up to them she could not think of anything more to say than, “Hey, guys.”
Ris didn’t even look at her. Hugo glanced over and his blue eyes were not forgiving.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
They kept walking. Lily waited a fraction of a second before following them. “Please,” she said.
They had reached the greenhouse. Hugo held the door open for Ris and let it fall shut behind him; Lily reached for it and tugged it open again. They were standing at a table toward the back of the mostly full glass-enclosed room. Lily could feel everyone’s eyes on her as she approached, but Ris and Hugo managed to keep their attention on the plant waving spiny arms on the table in front of them.
Lily stood beside Hugo. He shifted a barely perceptible inch away from her. The whole classroom had fallen silent, watching the three friends as if waiting for an explosion. None came before Professor Longbottom entered the room. He began lecturing without taking too much notice of the students, but when he finally glanced up his eyes found Lily’s immediately.
He sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Miss Potter,” he sounded almost apologetic, “I believe you’re in the wrong class.”
“Yes, sir.” But Lily didn’t move.
“Are you planning on standing there the whole class?”
“Yes, sir.”
She heard some muttering from somewhere in the group - maybe from that ratty Ravenclaw Smith, or the Hufflepuff at the front whose name she never could remember. Longbottom spared a glare for the class in general before turning his attention back to Lily.
“Don’t you have a class that you’re supposed to be in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lily,” he sighed, and she could see some of her family’s friend in the lines around his eyes, “go to your class please.” He was begging her not to make this more difficult on herself but Merlin, she just needed to sort out this mess with Ris and Hugo. She did not give a damn what everyone else said about her, but she needed her friends.
“Lily,” Hugo muttered, “go away.”
Ris elbowed him. They shouldn’t have decided on the silent treatment. Hugo sucked at silent treatment, but it was worrying how long he’d lasted.
Lily shook her head. “I won’t say anything, Professor. I swear. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Longbottom sighed and turned back to demonstrating what his students were supposed to be doing to the plants with the waving tentacles. Lily stepped out of the way. She’d never been good at Herbology.
When the class was over she began to follow Hugo and Ris out of the greenhouse, but Longbottom called her to the front. He waited until everyone had left the room to speak, although Lily noticed quite a few people lingering outside the door, probably with hearing-enhancing charms cast and their rumor-spreading tongues already wagging.
“Are you all right, Lily?” Professor Longbottom asked.
She glanced at the door before saying, “I’ll be fine once Hugo and Ris have yelled at me. This silence is disconcerting, don’t you think?” She smiled at him, ever the (false) positive one.
He shook his head. “You need to be more careful, Lily. If you want people to forget about it, you need to stop drawing attention to yourself.”
Lily raised her eyes to his. “I don’t care whether people forget about ‘it’ or not. I don’t care what people say. Can I go?” Ris and Hugo might have managed to make it back to the school by then, and they’d have easily lost her among the castle’s many corridors and corners.
“Yes. Yes, you can go.” Lily had already pushed through the group at the door by the time Professor Longbottom had finished.
Ris and Hugo hadn’t quite made it to the castle. Lily reached them before they mounted the front steps, and they both stopped walking.
“Lily,” Hugo sighed. “Just leave it alone, yeah?”
“No.” Lily was out of breath from running across the grounds and the word came out like a gasp. “No, I won’t.”
Ris was the queen of silent treatment. Lily didn’t expect her to talk; she was hoping to work on Hugo. But Ris’s eyes were suddenly locked on Lily’s own. “Look, you need to stop. Stop following us and trying to talk to us because we are not over it. And I honestly cannot see myself ever getting over it because Merlin, Lily, you lied to us. We don’t lie to each other.”
Lily could have said many things at that. She could have used the ever-relevant,we’re Slytherins. We lie to everyone. Or she could have reminded her best friend of the many lies she’d told Lily back in the beginning. But she just said, “I am so sorry.”
“Are you really?” Ris snorted. “I bet, if you could go back, you’d tell all those lies again.”
“Not to you. To you, I’d tell the truth. If I could do it again, I’d tell you the moment it started.”
“Bullshit,” Hugo said. “That’s bullshit, Potter. You’ve always been so fucking reserved - even with us. You never tell us anything.”
“Don’t try to deny it,” Ris added, “We were talking about it, and we realized that you’ve barely talked about anything other than PWP and our lives - Hugo and mine - in ages. Much longer than a year.”
This was that same goddamn fight she’d had with Teddy back at the beginning of the summer all over again. She could use the same solution - offer transparency for forgiveness. “My life is not interesting,” Lily told them. “You know that.”
“We’re interested,” Hugo said. “We’ve always been.”
“Fine. What do you want to know?” A crowd had gathered around them, and the students had stopped breathing at that. She was about to spill secrets to the school. But that only mattered for the next three months. Three months was not a long time.
“Why didn’t you tell us about Teddy?” Ris shot immediately.
“Because I didn’t want you to judge me.” Lily had rehearsed the answer to that question too many times.
“How could you think that we would?” Hugo asked.
“Because we judge everyone else,” Lily could feel sudden, shameful tears in her eyes. “It seemed safer as a secret.”
Ris looked at her for a long moment. She looked at the crowd of students around them, all fascinated by the fight, all horribly obvious about their eavesdropping, all bitter about some imagined or real slight Lily or Ris or Hugo had done them in the past. Ris shook her head and crossed the space to link her arm with Lily’s. “This is not over,” she told her. “But for now, I forgive you.”
Hugo took a minute longer but he came to Lily’s other side eventually, and the three of them went up to the castle together, leaving a very disappointed group of students behind them.
[x]
Things didn’t go back to normal, but they were as close to normal as Lily could have hoped for, and she was grateful for that. Hugo and Ris made her talk to them more, but that wasn’t a bad thing. She had forgotten how lucky she was to have them as her friends.
Every morning when the owls flew into the Great Hall, Lily looked up, holding onto the stupid hope that Teddy would have said, “Fuck it” to her father’s restriction (even though she was too scared to). Every morning she was disappointed.
One morning in early March an owl did land at her spot. He was unfamiliar, but the writing on the envelope he held wasn’t. She had last seen it on a howler, but this letter seemed unaltered by any spells.
She opened the envelope and pulled out the letter after offering Sebastian’s new owl a piece of bacon.
Potter -
Ted just told me what my dad did to you. I had no idea and I am so sorry. I wish that I could have stopped him. He is such a fucking bastard.
Thank you for keeping my secret even though I probably didn’t deserve it.
Sorry about the howler.
Ted says that you’ve got some problems with your family and he’s been working his ass off more than usual lately so I know that things aren’t perfect right now for either of you but I hope they get better. I hope you can come back this summer.
- Nott
She folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket. She felt homesick in a way she hadn’t since the beginning of the school year and when Ris looked at her with questions in her eyes Lily shrugged. “I’m just missing Greece.”
They understood.
[x]
Harry typically received a pile of letters in his box at the office around eleven every morning, and then sometimes he spent his lunch break reading them, delegating the less urgent ones to other people in the department, occasionally binning them without responding, and every so often answering them himself. He often allowed the letters to pile up for days, supposing that nothing too important would arrive via owl.
But after the full moon in March he began paying much closer attention to all forms of correspondence. Whenever he walked down corridors or stood in the lift and saw fluttering memos passing, he tried to decipher the department title on the parchment. If the memo was flitting from or to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures he’d sometimes snatch them out of the air and unfold them, reading them quickly before setting them free again. Nobody questioned him about it - he was Harry Potter, after all, and the glares that he sent after the freed memos made even those who knew him hesitant to speak to him.
He sorted through his post the instant his secretary deposited it in his box, his hands flipping between the papers as he searched for familiar handwriting on the envelopes. Finally, one day near the middle of the month he pulled a letter from the pile and recognized the handwriting on the front from his godson’s few letters over the past several years. He opened the envelope with shaking hands, hoping that Teddy had somehow managed to convince the Ministry officials that he deserved continued funding. There were two pages.
Dear Harry,
The experiment is still on! I managed to work some sort of miracle with the potions and the board thought it was impressive enough to continue funding the experiment, despite my “questionable personal choices”. I’ve included the details on the next sheet, which I’ve written as a letter to Lily. If you find it appropriate, will you please send it to her? She was very involved in the potions process this summer, and I want her to know how it’s working out.
Thank you,
Teddy
[x]
Lily still watched the owls entering the Great Hall well into March, even though she knew that she shouldn’t have expected anything from Teddy, or anything more from Nott. Her connections to the world outside of Hogwarts had been steadily shrinking since August, but she couldn’t help her eyes drifting up to search for familiar feathers among the owls every morning. Even so, she was surprised to see her father’s owl there one day in mid-March. She opened the envelope immediately, pulling out two sheets of parchment.
The first page was a rushed message from her father.
Hi, Lily,
I just got a note from Teddy and he asked me to send this to you. I’ve read it and it’s very exciting news.
I’ve already let him know that I’ve sent it to you, so you don’t need to worry about responding. However, he did mention that you’d been involved in the potions making this summer - you’ve never mentioned you like potions - what’s that about?
Look forward to hearing from you.
Love,
Dad
She dropped the first sheet on her empty breakfast plate and began reading the letter from Teddy.
Dear Lily,
I don’t think that your father would have told you that the experiment was put under surveillance last month - the department wanted to ensure that I wasn’t wasting money. It was terrifying beforehand, of course. I brewed the potions with no idea of whether they’d be any more effective than of the others we’ve tried, but I knew that if they weren’t any better these would be the last batches I ever brewed.
The woman from the Ministry arrived just before the full moon, so I gave her a tour of the house and everything and then she watched the whole procedure. It made me pretty pissed, actually, because she was so clinical about the whole thing and Josef and Ana and Tomas were in pain and the Ministry employee was just asking such bastardly questions.
The first night nothing happened. The werewolves transformed like always, although I think it was slightly less painful than usual. Remember the first full moon you were here for, when the pain was so bad that their howls hurt to hear? That hasn’t happened since this summer, which I’ve been happy about, but the Ministry employees didn’t really seem to give a damn.
They were really disdainful about the whole thing. It made me nervous, but it also made me angry, because at least I’m trying something. No one else is even willing to do that.
But that all changed the next night, when I gave Josef, Ana, and Tomas the potions and they transformed like always, except that when they transformed none of them had tails. They were tailless wolves and Merlin, Lil, I’ve never been so happy in my life.
Luckily the Ministry official realized that this was a big deal. so the experiment is continuing!
About your last letter, I forgive you, of course. But Merlin, Lil, why didn’t you tell one of us? I wish you’d told me or your parents or even Albus. We could have helped. But I’m sure you’ve heard that from your parents already, so I’ll let it be.
I will see you in June.
Love,
Teddy
He was curing lycanthropy and he would see her in June. She couldn’t stop smiling for days.
[x]
Lily had thought that celebrating the end of seven years’ education would have been climactic. She would have expected noisy explosions of sparklers in the night sky and bonfires of burnt textbooks (Bathilda Bagshot and Cassandra Vablatsky prominent among them) and long, teary speeches from each of the professors about how much they would miss each individual student. Lily’s expectations, she found, were incorrect. Professor McGonagall announced the names of all of the seventh years at the final feast and the school applauded them after McGonagall read off “Zabini, Mada.”
Slytherin house threw its own leaving party, of course, but Lily, Ris, and Hugo decided not to join. They slipped outside after the feast, Lily carrying a bottle of Firewhiskey beneath her robes, and went to sit by the Lake.
Lily had always liked the way the grounds looked at night. They were empty and dark, with obscured shapes of trees and buildings jutting at odd angles from the sloping hills. To others it might have seemed menacing and dangerous; to Lily, Ris, and Hugo it was an image of home.
“So.” Ris took the bottle from Lily and untwisted the cap, tilting it back into her mouth. Hugo took it from her.
“So,” Lily repeated.
“This is it.” Lily had always thought that if any of them cried when they left school, it would have been Hugo. She had never told him this, of course, and his voice sounded steady enough, so she guessed she had been wrong.
“We’re really leaving,” Ris said. “Merlin, I never really thought this would happen to us.”
“What?” Lily laughed, “You thought time was going to stop before we left school?”
“I thought that we would magically sort out a way to stop time before we left school,” Ris corrected. “But I guess that we grew out of it sooner than I thought we would.” She had the bottle again and she held it up to her eye, looking at the slowly lapping Lake through the glass and alcohol. “Whenever I thought about our last night here, I thought we’d be frantically selling our last stocks of Touch Explosion and trying to make every single second count.”
“I never thought we’d be ready to go,” Hugo confessed. “But this year didn’t really turn out the way I expected it to.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I think a lot of that was probably my fault. I know I kind of…abandoned you guys for a while there.”
“It’s all right, Lil,” Hugo said. “We get it now.”
“And it’s probably better this way.” Ris tipped the bottle into her mouth and collected the last few drops of Firewhiskey on her tongue. “I’d rather be ready to leave than want to be a child forever.”
“And now we can all go off and be adults, or something like them.”
Lily grinned. “Maybe. Or maybe we can just be us, with big boy and big girl jobs.”
“If we manage to get jobs,” Hugo muttered. “Ris and I are still fucked in that department.”
“You’re really going to Greece?” Ris asked, tossing the bottle into the Lake and leaning her head against Lily’s shoulder.
“If I pass the exam and get offered the position, yeah.”
“We’ll miss you.” Hugo tugged at her braid and she shrugged, bumping Ris’s head against her ear.
“You can just Floo me.”
“Nice,” Ris muttered.
“But of course I’ll miss you, too.” Lily elbowed her and Ris shoved her back.
“I don’t like goodbyes,” she said.
“Then we won’t say them,” Lily promised. “Besides, we’ll all be back here again. No one ever leaves Hogwarts for good. And we have the whole summer before I leave for Greece. If I even get the job.”
“You’ll get it,” Ris told her. “You’re Lily Potter. The world can only fuck you over so much before things start going your way.”
“I like that theory.” Lily stood and the world swam around her. “Shall we?”
“Let’s.”
They were the only people moving in the dark grounds, and Lily said silent goodbyes, because these moments were the last ones she’d spend with such an intimate, possessive knowledge of Hogwarts.
[x]
When Lily had sent her parents a letter explaining that she had signed up to take the Potion’s Master’s Examination and that she wanted to apply for a job as Teddy’s assistant they had exchanged a look and Ginny had written Lily seven different letters before she ended up sending one.
It read:
Dear Lily,
Your dad and I are happy that you’re starting to make plans for your life after Hogwarts (you’re certainly beating James in that regard!), but we’re concerned that you haven’t put much thought into this.
We understand that you were interested in Teddy’s experiments over the summer, but we’re worried that you are making this decision based on a relationship which has not had the opportunity to grow (and we will not hide that we are still worried about the age difference). If you have decided to apply for this job because of Teddy, please consider how you would feel about it if you felt no emotional attachment - or even a negative emotional attachment - to him, and then decide whether or not this is the ideal position for you.
We love you.
Mum and Dad
Lily hadn’t been as angry when she received that letter as she would have been a few months before. She pulled out her own parchment and quill immediately and sent her parents a calming note in response.
Dear Mum and Dad:
I understand where you’re coming from, but after having spent the summer with Ana and Josef and Tomas and Sebastian I cannot imagine any other place for myself. My decision has very little to do with Teddy. I want to help my friends, and I feel as if Teddy’s experiment provides the best opportunity.
Love,
Lily
They exchanged another look when they received that note, but they didn’t express their doubts to their daughter. After all, Lily had always had a big, if slightly frosty, heart. And besides, Harry and Ginny were not at all sure what the chances of Lily passing the Potions Masters Exam were. She had done well enough on her NEWTS, they thought, but, well, it had always been difficult to tell with her.
[x]
Lily passed, of course. She received her results in mid-July and she sent her application in to the Department for the Protection and Control of Magical Creatures the next day. She wrote Teddy a letter and sent Ris and Hugo and Al and Score and James messages and left the results on her kitchen table so her parents would see them. Then she went out to her backyard and sat on her rock until the sun turned the leaves gold.
Ris and Hugo found her there. “Are you leaving for real, then?” Ris asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Lily, you got perfect scores. You’ll get the job,” Hugo pushed her and she moved over so they could both sit on the rock with her.
She took their hands in hers and said, “Yeah, I guess I’m leaving.”
“You’re happy, aren’t you?” Ris said. “You had goddamn better be happy, Lily Luna, because if you’re making me feel this sad and you’re not happy I will seriously kill you.”
“If you’re not happy, you should call this whole thing off and we can start brewing illegal potions again because that’s what we’re all really good at.”
“I’m happy,” Lily told them. “But I’m sorry you’re sad. I promise I’ll come visit and you’ll come visit. I want you to meet everyone and properly meet Teddy and I want you to see…everything.”
“God, we’re so old.” Ris kicked her heel against the rock. “When did that happen?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think I mind.”
“Yeah, well you wouldn’t.” Hugo sighed. “You were always the oldest out of all of us, Lil.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you’re mature.” Ris tugged her hand from Lily’s and slid down from the rock. Hugo followed her, and they stood facing Lily. Ris was smiling, but her eyes were bright. “Here.” She held out a familiar bottle and Lily took it after a moment.
“Touch Explosion?” Lily asked.
“We saved the last bottle for you,” Ris explained. “Since you’ve finally got someone to use it with.”
Lily laughed. “How thoughtful of you.”
“We are the best.” Hugo grinned. “We’ll see you, Lil.”
“Yeah, see you.”
They disapparated and she tilted the bottle, watching as the potion swirled against the glass. Merlin, there was such a history there. She slipped the potion into her pocket and sat outside for a while longer, before going inside and listening to her parents’ congratulations. It was all sort of a blur; she just wanted her job offer to arrive. She just wanted to be there, already.
Two weeks after she received her test results, two letters arrived for Lily in the post. The first was addressed in fancy script on thick parchment, and she slit the Ministry seal to find that she had been accepted as “Potions Master II” on the “Lycanthropy Program” in Greece. She would begin the third week of August.
The second was from Teddy. He had only written: I can’t wait. He hadn’t needed to write anything else.
When she sprinkled Floo Powder on her fire and dragged her trunk into the flames, she didn’t feel sad. This time she knew that when the fire released her she would be home.
Epilogue