Chapter Text
June, 1976
James Potter asked Lily Evans if she might consider going on a date with him the day they finished their last exams. She had revised constantly for the past two months, and it was only when she saw him approach her nervously as she stood by the lake that she realised she had spent more time with him in the past term than the rest of her time at Hogwarts combined. She thought something was going on between Sirius and Remus—she would ask Mary the details now that exams were over—, and James had seemingly decided to split his time between the two of them. Because James had some respect for exam term this year due to O.W.L.s, the time with Remus had been in the library with her and a few others, and she had been trying to stick close to Remus after she had finally cut ties with Severus. After she had ascertained that to her view, James was in the right in his disputes with Severus these days, she hadn’t given his presence a second thought besides being grateful for his help with Transfigurations—but there he was, looking …besotted.
“Lily,” he gasped. “Can I ask you something?”
She closed her eyes and frowned. “Hi, James.”
“Lily, I know we haven’t always gotten along, and I know I’ve been a git sometimes, but I’m trying to be more aware of how I interact with the world. And I can’t stop noticing you. I wanted to ask if there was any chance you’d consider going with me to Hogsmeade next year.”
“Next year? God, James, think ahead much?”
“If I know what I want, why wait?”
“I wish you didn’t," she said too quickly.
“You wish I didn’t ask you now?”
“I mean, that doesn’t help anything. I’m sorry, James. I do appreciate that you’ve been less cocky and more empathetic recently, but I don’t think that’s what I want with you.” She looked into his eyes, nervous and sorry. It would have been good protection for her to be with James. Hogwarts was getting more and more dangerous for Muggle born students, and James was a pureblood but a known blood-traitor, so being with him wouldn’t make her more attacked the way Mary was targeted for being with Sirius. But it wouldn’t be right; she didn’t feel that way about him. She’d have to practise protective charms to use on herself in the corridors.
She walked away as he yelled back at her, surprisingly jokingly, “That’s not something to be sorry about, you prat!”
Mary broke up with Sirius about an hour later, and that was all the Gryffindor girls their year talked about for a while. Lily didn’t even remember to tell Mary and Marlene about the incident until the train back to London. Mary came into the carriage, hands in her hair and pulling her skin taut over her high cheekbones. “Did you see him again getting in?” Marlene asked Mary.
“Yes, and he’s not even sad I broke up with him! I swear to God, he’s too fit for his own good. All the girls throw themselves at him, and he doesn’t know what the hell he wants. Why did he go out with me for a bloody year if he doesn’t even care that I broke it off? What the fuck did he want from me? I said we might be better off as friends, and he said—AND I QUOTE—“Thank Merlin, I was worried things would be awkward between us.”’
Marlene furrowed her brow, but seemed to dismiss whatever thought she’d had. “Fucking prick. You can do better than him, Mary.”
“That’s the issue. Can I? He’s the fittest bloke our year. I won’t date a Slytherin because they’re fucking fascists; I can’t date someone from home, or they’ll get suspicious about what kind of school I go to; and this school is bloody small. The only other remotely attractive bloke our year is James.”
“Oh, Christ,” Lily muttered. “I didn’t tell you all he asked me out. Give him the summer to recover and maybe he’ll come around to you next year.”
“Fuck, Lily, why didn’t you tell us?” Mary scooted closer to her. Lily sat so still, fighting her impulse to shy away from Mary’s touch. Why the hell did she feel so much every damn time Mary touched her?
“It was the day you broke up with Sirius. It wasn’t important.”
“Not important? My arse. Lily, you need to get yourself out there! It’s about time you two had boyfriends. I can’t be stealing all the fun. Marlene, the time you went to Hogsmeade with Peter in third year does not count. You left after an hour and told me you had only talked about chocolate frog cards.”
“It’s fine, Mary,” Lily insisted.
“No, it’s not.” Mary twirled one of Lily’s plaits around her finger, brushing her finger and then Lily’s own hair against Lily’s cheek. Lily felt the heat rise to her cheeks; they must be burning red from the embarrassment of the situation. “I can’t be the only one with a sex life. At least Sirius was good with that; he’d do whatever I told him.” She laughed.
Lily had no shortage of memories of finding Mary and Sirius—always with a different combination of clothing items tossed aside—in broom cupboards on her prefect rounds. The worst was when she was with Remus. He got so flustered she thought he must fancy Mary.
“So you like your men submissive,” Marlene smirked.
Mary flipped her off, then began unplaiting and replaiting Lily’s hair. Lily’s head was processing everything so slowly, just thinking about Mary’s fingers. “Well, maybe he fancies one of you!” Mary said. “Maybe that’s why he was so weird. I’m over him. I was the one to break up. So if next year one of you want to date him, go ahead.”
“Generous,” Marlene giggled. “But I don’t think I’ll take you up on it.”
“Lily?” Mary asked.
“Hm?”
“Do you fancy Sirius?”
“Er, no.”
“Why not?” Mary continued.
“Christ, I don’t know. I guess I think he’s been a dick to Remus recently. They’re clearly pissed off at each other.”
“So do you fancy Remus then? I guess if you think about him a certain way he’d seem pretty fit.”
“No, I don’t! I wondered if you did, actually.”
“Nah, I don’t. What do you say about Peter?”
“No.”
Mary looked concerned. “Not Severus? Please, not Severus.”
“Christ!” Lily yelled, taking her hair out of Mary’s hands and scooting away into the corner, refinishing the plait on her own and coming out of the reverie of Mary’s touch and into pure frustration with her.
“Back off, OK, Mary?” Marlene said. “Severus is a dick, and we don’t need boyfriends.”
“OK, Jesus,” Mary muttered. Lily pulled out a book, and read the rest of the way to King’s Cross.
Once arrived, she got the train to Ely. Her parents had (she was unsure of how) contacted Professor McGonagall to tell Lily that they wouldn’t be able to meet her at the station; they were in the North because her mother’s mother was in hospital. She caught a train almost immediately, and found a seat by the window. She’d always loved watching the countryside from the train. It was almost soothing enough to clear her head.
The Evans flat was near the station—Lily’s father sang second tenor in the cathedral choir, and he liked to walk to rehearsal and evensong, so they lived in a small flat near the centre of town. Petunia had left a note saying she was out with Vernon and would be back by 11. Great, what’s better? Petunia or being left alone here? It was just after 7—too late to go to evensong and see if she could come to rehearsal tomorrow (there wasn’t normally a place for girls her age in the choir, especially if they didn’t go to King’s, but over the summer they were often short in the alto section, so she usually went with her father), but too early to go to bed to try to forget that awful conversation with Mary. Petunia had left her haircutting scissors on the table. It was a bit ridiculous, how Petunia would comb through her hair for split ends before every date. Look at her, caring about boys how she was supposed to.
Lily tried to imagine herself dressing up for James Potter, and she imagined what Mary would say to her, how she would look at her, fix her hair. Lily’s cheeks flushed red as she dragged the scissors along the section of her neck where Mary had touched her earlier—she could still feel it. Frustrated, she squeezed down on the scissors before realising she had cut halfway through the plait Mary had done on the train—a fourth of her hair cut above her collar bone and spilling out of the remnant of the plait.
There was no way to hide this. She ran to the loo to see the mirror and couldn’t help herself. She laughed, and finished severing her left plait, and moving on to cut off the right one. Then came the arduous task of evening out the haircut. Goddamnit, Mary, why do I do shit like this because of you? The sink in the loo was full of her hair, her two foot-long plaits sat unceremoniously by the taps. Her hands aching, she walked into the kitchen for a break, and saw her friend Jonathan from choir (first tenor) on the street. She grabbed a scarf and wrapped her hair in it and ran out to greet him.
“Lily!” He replied. “Back from school?”
“Just now! Got the 6 o’clock in from London. Say, are you busy?”
“Not at all; I was just practising organ in the cathedral.”
“So you’re not at war with the C of E anymore? Back to being a good choirboy?”
“Sod off, you know how it is. It’s bloody good music and they don’t care what I believe. Anyway, what are you up to?”
“Er, I need some help. Come in; no one’s home.”
He followed her inside, and she pulled off the scarf.
He looked her over. “Very chic, very modern, but… uneven.”
“I know. Er, I had a bit of a breakdown and started cutting. Could you help me with the back?”
“I’ll do my best, though I doubt it’ll be any good,” he said, “And you have to tell what brought this on.” He motioned for her to sit down as he picked up the scissors and started working. His fingers were right where hers had been, so why could she still feel Mary’s touch? She couldn’t tell herself she just had overly sensitive skin there; Jonathan’s fingers didn’t have the same effect.
“Er, someone from school asked me out, and I didn’t feel that way for him so I said no, but a friend gave me hell about it.”
“I see… is there any reason why you’d be supposed to date this bloke?”
“Apparently he’s the suitable boy in school for me.”
“That's a large assumption for your friend to make. How is the suitability of your suitors determined?” he joked.
“Fuck if I know.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Have you ever dated anyone, Lily?”
She watched more hair fall onto the floor. “No, not unless you count a couple shitty dates when I was 14.” She paused. She’d look at him if she wasn’t afraid she’d lose the remaining bit of her hair if she moved. “Have you?”
He stopped cutting, and walked around her chair to face her. She slid her hands into her hair to feel it, pulled a few strands taut against her face. They barely made it past her mouth. His dark eyes probed hers. “I only have this past term.” He bit his lip. “You’re home alone, right?”
“Yeah. Christ, I wouldn’t be doing this if Petunia were here.”
“OK--I’m going to tell you something, but only if you promise not to denounce me as a bloody communist.”
“I know you’re not a communist. You’re not idealistic enough. And I swear, I don’t go to espionage school. I know I can’t tell you shit about my school, so that’s what you’ll think, but I swear on anything you can believe to be dear to me that I won’t turn you into the government unless you’re committing mass fucking murder.” She paused. “So tell me about who you’re seeing, if you’re willing.”
He took a deep breath. “He started at King’s this year for sixth form. His name is Stephen. He headed back to Peterborough three days ago. I haven’t told anyone but you, and you’re the only person I know headed to the bloody MI5.”
Lily’s head spun. She knew she was sheltered, growing up religious and then sent off to a wizard school with a strange ideology which could have been from the 17th century, except without the radical Protestant sects shaking things up, but she’d never actually known someone admit to being in a relationship with someone of the same gender. Stupidly, the first thing in her mind was Remus and Sirius looking at each other on the train earlier, when she’d gone to find Remus before the prefect meeting, even though that was absurd—everyone knew Sirius dated every girl he could get his hands on. His yearlong relationship with Mary had been a change of pace for him. Mary . Her full, bright lips; her high cheekbones; her lovely dark eyes that Lily now always found herself avoiding, lest she look suspicious. Lily’s eyes grew wide and then she shut them.
“You OK?” Jonathan asked.
“Er, yes. God, er, thanks for trusting me enough to tell me that.” She chastised herself for worrying him. “Are you happy?”
“Oh, having the loveliest of times in every properly hidden nook and cranny in the cathedral.”
“In the cathedral! My god,” she laughed. “If you’re happy, that’s what matters. Why did you think I’d tell the MI5? Is he a communist?”
“Of course not! Do you really not understand? What the hell is your school?”
“So stuck in the past that I didn’t realise until just now, now that you told me that, that I fancy Mary, the friend of mine who wanted me to date James Potter.”
Jonathan’s eyes sparkled, like he had known this about Lily. “It’s more an American thing than British… queer people are often suspected of communism. McCarthy’s red scare was accompanied by mass government firing of suspected queer people.” He paused, and Lily pretended she’d more than cursorily heard of these things. She hadn’t exactly read the newspaper regularly before going to Hogwarts, and the summer was always accompanied by the brutal realisation of everything she missed out on by being at Hogwarts. “So, Mary?”
“My bloody roommate! And she played with my hair while telling me I should have dated James Potter, and I almost swooned, I guess, and then I kept feeling her fingers in my hair so I cut my bloody hair off!”
They looked at each other for a moment, and then started laughing.
“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Jonathan tutted. “Here, let’s finish your hair and clean up. I’m sure Petunia will go ballistic if she comes home to find hair everywhere.”
“Christ, she will. I’m hoping I can hoover well enough that I can tell her this happened a week ago due to an accident in a chemistry lesson.” She’d say it was a potions lesson to Petunia, but no need to complicate things further.
“Right, good luck with that. When can I expect my yearly afternoon with Severus you force upon us for old time’s sake?”
“…do you want to see him?”
“Well, no.”
“Then never, as I’m not speaking to him.”
“Oh, good for you. Do you want to say why?”
“God, not really. He’s just more prejudiced than I thought.”
Jonathan bit his lip. “He’s always been prejudiced. I don’t know why you thought he was redeemable before. Anyway, rehearsal starts early, at 4 tomorrow, and the alto section desperately needs you, by the way. Susan is in Manchester for her son’s graduation.”
“Well, it’s a good way to avoid Petunia. We singing anything good?”
“Bainton!”
“Nice… hey, you thought I was queer, didn’t you?” Lily asked.
“I wondered,” he admitted.
“Why?”
"You were shocked when Severus asked you out last year. This was after he'd been following you around like a lovesick puppy for years. And that Christmas you said he had betrayed you, and you made me promise I'd never do anything like that, as though that were something that happened with men that you could have no way of predicting, and which would be universally unwelcome."
"I thought Severus and I were friends!"
Jonathan tutted. “Also, you’ve always seemed to have no idea why Petunia liked Vernon!”
“He’s an arse!”
“Yeah, but he’s fit.”
“I can't look at him without imagining what he'll look like twenty-five years from now."
"Christ, don't tell me!"
Lily raised her eyebrows at him. "His rugby muscles will all atrophy, but he'll still be inexplicably huge, and all his neck will be gone, subsumed into that hugeness."
"I don't want to think about it," he said. "But really, half of the time we have serious conversations it's because you're telling me about boys you don't want to date, and last year you said you never wanted a boyfriend. That made me feel a lot more... normal, since I don't want a girlfriend."
"Well, if you have a boyfriend, that basically evens out that I don't have one, right?"
He laughed.
Lily was away from Mary for two months now, unless they went to Marlene’s the same week. And she felt more normal, now—there was a word for this, and she wasn’t alone. Talking about music, religion, and sexuality, Lily could almost forget the whole wizarding world, and with it the war she and her friends would have to go out and fight in two years.