Chapter Text
The coffee James shakily pressed into Lily’s hand was an unappealing light brown colour, like dirty dishwater, but she gulped it anyway, grateful for its comforting warmth. James sat beside her heavily, letting out a long sigh. He tapped his right foot quickly, then his left. He crossed his legs and uncrossed them in quick succession. He ruffled his hair, took off his glasses and put them back on.
“Stop fidgeting, James.” Lily’s voice sounded foreign to her own ears, muffled and far away.
“I can’t help it,” James retorted, taking his glasses off once again and polishing them on the hem of his shirt. His dark eyes were tired, ringed with grey circles. Lily checked the ticking clock on the wall clock - 2:00 am. She probably didn’t look much better. “Where did Rem go?”
“Ringing his parents,” Lily said wearily. “Pete will be here soon, too.”
On cue, as if summoned by the stage directions of Lily’s voice, a round, mousy blur crashed through the A&E ward’s double doors, almost taking out a nurse in the process.
“Shit, sorry, sorry!” Peter skidded to a stop in front of Lily and James, red faced and panting. “How is he?”
“We don’t know,” Lily said ruefully. “They haven’t even let Remus see him properly yet, only for a second whilst they brought him in on the stretcher thing.”
“Jesus.” Peter ran two chubby hands down his face, shaking his head. “So… what happened?”
Lily bit her lip. “Rem hasn’t told us everything yet, but Sirius was jumped outside work.”
Peter gaped at her, sitting down heavily in a chair next to James. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus,” he repeated. “So, what happens now?”
James stood up quickly, pushing his glasses back up his nose and cracking his back, revealing an inch of flat, brown stomach. “We just have to wait and see, I guess. Nothing else we can do.”
The double doors opened again, revealing an exhausted-looking Remus walking with a careworn doctor who was speaking to him in a low, sympathetic voice. As the trio watched, Remus nodded and thanked her, then sat down next to Lily. She placed her hand in his cold one and squeezed it tightly. He smiled at her wanly, but there was no light behind his pale eyes.
“Is he going to be okay?”
Miraculously, thankfully, Remus nodded once. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and hoarse and gave out after a moment. James silently handed him a water bottle, which he accepted gratefully before trying again.
“He’s got some broken ribs and his right wrist is fractured. Nothing worse, luckily, just some facial bruising and a concussion, so he’s awake but the doctors just want to speak to him before we can see him.”
Lily let out a shaky sigh of relief as Peter wiped his brow. James looked relieved for about a millisecond before his face changed and he looked ready to punch someone. “What happened?” He asked through gritted teeth. Lily saw the muscle jumping in his jaw again.
Remus sighed heavily, leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and shut his eyes for a moment before speaking again, anger edging the sadness in his quiet voice.
“The eyewitnesses said Siri was on a smoke break at the bar, round the front because the back was so packed. He was minding his own business, just on his phone when three blokes appeared practically from nowhere and just… attacked him. He couldn’t do anything except take it.” Remus paused as his friends tried to take this in, before saying something that made Lily’s heart twist in her chest.
“The police think it’s something to do with those fucking Death Eaters.”
At those words, Lily felt her chest constrict, a vice clamping brutally around her lungs. Even though she was sat down, the hospital floor suddenly seemed to spin off-kilter. Lily staggered to her feet, brushing off Peter’s hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, I, I just… need some air…”
She reeled down the hallway, barely seeing the nurses and technicians whizzing by, the stark white walls closing in, the stinging sanitary smell filling her nostrils as she lurched towards the emergency exit door.
Fresh, cold air smacked her in the face, and Lily gasped, desperately trying to pull more of it into her flaming lungs. She clawed at the brick wall to her right side, attempting to keep herself upright, but she was falling, falling-
Two warm, sturdy hands grasped her under the armpits and hoisted her up, before the strong arms attached to those hands wrapped themselves around her shaking shoulders, and Lily’s tear-streaked face was suddenly pressed into James Potter’s solid chest.
“Shhh…” he was whispering into her hair, rocking her gently as if she were a baby. “Calm down, Evans. It’s okay.”
“It’s all my fault,” Lily managed to gasp into James’ chest, sobs hiccuping their way out of her mouth. “It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Lil, it’s not-“
“It is!” She wrenched herself free of his grasp and wrapped her goose-bumped arms around her torso in an attempt to emulate the calming presence James had created. She could feel her teeth chattering together as panic and anguish and self-loathing rose in her gut and chest like bile. James attempted to move towards her again, but she jerked away. “It is my fault. If I hadn’t seen Severus, if I hadn’t said what I said…”
“What did you say?”
Lily looked up at the man she supposedly hated, with concern etched in every corner of his being - hair ruffled from messing it up anxiously, brow furrowed, mouth twisted into a frown. She took a deep breath.
*
The gin and tonic burned pleasantly in Lily’s throat as she sipped from the thin-rimmed glass, looking everywhere except into Severus’ dark, searching eyes. His thin, yellowish fingers played absently with a beer mat, tapping it on the wooden table over and over. His nails were clean, Lily noticed. That had always been Severus’ thing, keeping his nails fastidiously clean, constantly filing them and scraping out any dirt from underneath. She watched those nails on their fingers as they wrapped around his pint, bringing the spotted glass to his thin lips.
He gulped, prominent Adam’s apple bobbing, then set the glass down, fussily moving it to the very centre of the beer mat. Lily waited. Finally, the silence was broken by his nasally voice.
“So. How have you been?”
It was so normal, so unassuming, that Lily couldn’t help but snort a laugh. Severus raised his dark eyebrows, lips curling into a small smile. Lily smiled back on instinct, before remembering herself and taking a glug of her drink.
“I’m fine.”
Pause.
“I’m good, too,” Severus said amusedly. “Thanks for asking.”
Lily scoffed, shaking her head. How dare he? “I don’t need to ask how you are, Sev.”
“Sev again, is it?” He was still smirking slightly, and the anger in Lily’s gut raised its head again.
“Force of habit,” she grunted out. This was a mistake. “Look, I don’t know what you want or why you sent one of your cronies after me, but whatever it is I’m really not interested.”
Instead of arguing back, Severus drummed his fingers on the table again, head cocked slightly to the side. The red and brown pattern of the booth behind him emphasised the sallowness of his face.
“You look sad, Flower.”
“Don’t call me that, Severus.”
“Sorry. Lily. You look sad.”
“Am I supposed to be jumping for joy at seeing you?”
“You said yes to seeing me, remember?”
He had a point. Everything she seemed to do recently, Lily pondered, seemed to be the wrong thing. Everything felt jumbled up in her head, like her brain couldn’t contain everything she felt.
Not for the first time that night, she wished James was sat next to her, a comforting hand on her knee.
“I can’t for the life of me remember why.”
Severus’ rueful smile dropped into a frown as his dark brow furrowed. He took another slow sip of lager before speaking. “I just… I wanted to apologise.”
“It’s a bit late for that. Like, five years too late.”
“I would’ve done it sooner, but you blocked me on everything, remember?”
“I think I had pretty good reason to block you.”
Severus huffed, clearly frustrated. He drummed his nails on the table again. Lily felt a pang of anxiety in her chest, reminded of the sullen silences he would inflict upon her during their friendship whenever he was pissed off with her.
“I came to the party in Devon to apologise but the boy wonder wouldn’t let me get near you.”
This was interesting. “What do you mean?”
Severus smiled strangely, showing pointed teeth. “You didn’t know? Potter told me to back off, leave the party. I said it wasn’t his party and I’d been invited so I’d leave when I felt like leaving.”
That was new. Lily stretched her memory back, trying to think of when James would have had a chance to stand up to Severus, but her train of thought was interrupted when her companion spoke again: “I only came so I could see you, apologise. I knew Petunia must be playing some stupid game by inviting me but I wasn’t interested in that.”
“Who was your plus one?”
She remembered the girl with Severus, pale and draped in dark clothing. “Oh, Bella. She drove down with me.”
“And you know her how?”
A flush came over Severus’ face, the red blush contrasting with his sallow complexion in a truly alarming fashion. For the first time since Lily had sat down with him, he seemed slightly cowed. She raised an eyebrow - of course.
“Death Eaters, I suppose.”
He didn’t need to reply, the turn of his mouth said it all.
“I thought you were finished with that lot.”
“I was,” Severus replied hurriedly. “I am. But so is Bella, we… helped each other.”
“So I guess you don’t believe in any of that bigoted shite anymore? The racism, the xenophobia, the homophobia?”
Severus opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again. His face was still coloured an ugly blush.
Lily scoffed, any warm residual feelings she may have still felt towards her old friend now replaced by the anger she was used to. “I suppose it never occurred to you that my parents come from Irish immigrants?”
“That’s different, Lil, you-“
“DON’T call me Lil.”
Her raised voice caught the attention of some customers and the middle-aged, baling bartender, who glanced over to their booth. Lily smiled at him in what she hoped was a placating fashion and lowered her voice when she spoke again after draining her drink decidedly.
“Severus, I don’t care if you’ve left that disgusting group. The fact is you claim you came to apologise to me, but I haven’t actually heard an apology leave your lips. You ignored my boundaries, basically assaulted me, and I don’t care how long ago it was, you don’t change from doing something like that. You joined a group that spouts hatred for anyone who isn’t exactly like you, and I’m not going to associate myself with someone like that anymore. Not now, not ever.”
Ignoring the shaking in her voice and hands and gut, Lily stood up, before a cold hand on her arm stopped her. She wrenched her arm away from Severus’ grasp and glared down at his strangely calm smile.
“You going back to your gross little friends, then? Your boyfriend ?” He sneered, looking every bit the storybook villain. “I thought you had more respect than that, Lily. You know how Potter treated you.”
And suddenly, as soon as Severus said it, it didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter how James had treated her previously - they were children. He was a lovestruck, silly little boy who lost his parents and hadn’t known where to put his enormous feelings for the girl he loved. And Lily realised she had forgiven him a long time ago.
“Yes. I am.” Lily took a deep breath before speaking again. “Goodbye, Severus.”
*
James whistled, long and low. Lily’s throat hurt after reeling off the long conversation with Severus. She brushed tears from her cold cheeks impatiently and waited for James to speak. When he finally did, his voice was soft.
“Not your fault, Lil.”
“But-“
“No ifs, no buts. All you did was tell him to back off. If the greasy little arsewipe sent his disgusting friends after Sirius, that was his choice. Don’t blame yourself, whatever you do.”
He paused, opened his mouth, closed it again, seemingly considering something.
“I blamed myself when my parents died. Trust me. Blame like that, it’s a disease, it will only make you sick.”
Cold wind picked up, ruffling James’ black hair and making Lily shiver. James smiled slightly. “Want my jacket back?”
His skin looked like it was glowing almost golden in the mixture of moonlight and neon lighting from the exit sign indoors, a golden brown hue that made Lily want to drown in his sweetness. He shifted his weight from foot to large foot, seeming to study her face in detail. And when he brought a hand up, like a reflex, to tuck a stray red hair behind her ear, Lily knew.
“James, I… I love you too.”
Barely a second elapsed after the words left Lily’s mouth when the emergency door opened, revealing a grinning Peter.
“Siri’s awake!”